Winner Takes All: Steve Wynn, Kirk Kerkorian, Gary Loveman, and the Race to Own Las Vegas

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Description

Wall Street Journal columnist Christina Brinkley explores how Wynn, Kerkorian and Lovemann built a bigger, better Las Vegas and how their influence has begun to spread beyond the borders of the city. Peppered with celebrity cameos, this sharp, fast-paced narrative tells the story of how billions of dollars - and an unparalleled drive for power - took three men's visions for Vegas from mere dreams to a spectacularly-lit reality.

Reviews

A must-read!
--Vital Vegas podcast
Binkley offers plenty of nuggets mined from her years on the beat, producing a full, flashy tale of powerful men and their pride, vanity, envy, greed-and all the other cardinal no-no's that earned Vegas the name Sin City.--Publishers Weekly
Binkley vividly conveys the repulsiveness of the scene, but as with train wrecks, you just can't stop looking. Or reading.--The Washington Post
I haven't put this book down and for good reason. If you're curious about the people, ahem, men, who rule Las Vegas, Winner Takes All will introduce you to the world of flashy, egomaniacal business moguls. Christina Binkley a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist leads the troops into Las Vegas and unearths Steve Wynn, the tycoon behind such hotels as The Wynn and Encore hotels, amongst others. You'll be captivated by it.
--Women.com
The author has a novelist's instinct for character development and taut, suspenseful storytelling, infusing the subject with all of the drama, verve and what-happens-next imperative of a classic Scorsese epic.--Kirkus Reviews
The odds are good this will be quite a bestseller. It's a great drama on the greatest stage Wynn, Kerkorian, and Loveman represent three opposing business personalities, three styles of achieving success. On the Vegas strip, they're pitted against each other like gladiators, and we've got front row seats. Kapow!--Po Bronson, author of What Should I Do with My Life: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question
You won't want to put down her tale of how Kirk Kerkorian, Gary Loveman, and Steve Wynn got their start and made their fortunes in Sin City.--CNN Money

Author Bio

Christina Binkley is an award-winning journalist who writes and chats about the business of culture. At the Wall Street Journal for twenty-three years, she covered fashion, gambling, and other topics that familiarized her with larger-than-life personalities.

Binkley contributes to WSJ Magazine, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, and DesignLA. She appears periodically on venues such as CNN and National Public Radio. A graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Binkley was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of 9/11. She was awarded the Jesse Laventhol Prize for Deadline News Reporting by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Binkley lives in the hills of Los Angeles with her husband and two teens, with cats, a dog, a passel of chickens, and a dead-on view of the Hollywood sign.