Jeffrey Sussman discusses ‘Sin City Gangsters: The Rise and Decline of the Mob in Las Vegas’

Sin City Gangsters: The Rise and Decline of the Mob in Las Vegas is a fast-paced account of how the mob created and controlled Las Vegas. It contains accounts of how the most powerful mobsters in the country built, bought, and controlled not only gambling casinos in Vegas, but also many important politicians, who did the mob’s bidding. Some of the more notorious mobsters were Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Moe Dalitz, Sam Giancana, Tony Accardo, and Nick Civella, as well as the men they chose to carry out their plans, such as Tony Spilotro, Lefty Rosenthal, and Donald Angelini. Sin City Gangsters devotes a chapter to Jimmy Hoffa, and how the Teamsters Pension Fund financed the mob’s casinos. The book also offers fascinating accounts of the roles of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley in Vegas.
Sin City Gangsters is the only book that charts Vegas from the first modest mob-owned casinos to the present billion-dollar-resorts; its cast of characters is an assembly of exceedingly ambitious risk takers who let nothing stand in their way of turning their dreams into stunning realities.
Jeffrey Sussman is the author of 16 books, six of which have been published by Rowman and Littlefield. His most recent titles include Big Apple Gangsters: The Rise and Decline of the Mob in New York (2022), Holocaust Fighters: Boxers, Resisters, and Avengers (2021) and Boxing and the Mob: The Notorious History of the Sweet Science (2019). Jeffrey lives in New York City.