Leaving Las Vegas

Author: John O'Brien
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 0802197299
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 174

Book Description
This “brutal and unflinching” novel of fleeting love in Sin City inspired the film starring Nicholas Cage and Elizabeth Shue (Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City). John O’Brien’s debut novel, Leaving Las Vegas, is an emotionally wrenching story of a woman who embraces life and a man who rejects it; a powerful tale of hard luck, hard drinking, and a relationship of tenderness and destruction. An avowed alcoholic, Ben drinks away his family, friends, and, finally, his job. With deliberate resolve, he burns the remnants of his life and heads for Las Vegas to end it all in the last great binge of his hopeless life. On the Strip, he picks up Sera, a prostitute, in what might have become another excess in his self-destructive jag. Instead, their chance meeting becomes a respite on the road to oblivion as they form a bond that is as mysterious as it is immutable.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Author: Hunter S. Thompson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780007161232
Category : Experimental fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
This is a reissue of the novel inspired by Hunter S. Thompson's ether-fuelled, savage journey to the heart of the American Dream: We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold... And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.

Leaving Las Vegas

Author: Mike Figgis
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571297455
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 127

Book Description
Ben Sanderson is an alcoholic who has hit rock bottom. Cutting all personal and professional ties to his L.A. existence, he sets off for the lights of Vegas on a mission: to drink himself to death. There he meets Sera, a beautiful, seen-it-all hooker. From the moment Ben and Sera connect, they form a unique bond based upon unconditional acceptance and mutual respect that will change each of them forever. In the words of David Thompson of Los Angeles Magazine, Leaving Las Vegas is a masterpiece. Best Actor Oscar (R) winner Nicolas Cage and Best Actress nominee Elisabeth Shue set the screen ablaze in this profoundly moving love story. Nominated for two additional Academy Awards (R), Director and Adapted Screenplay, this emotionally charged powerhouse of a film graced over 100 '10 Best' lists including Roger Ebert's #1 Movie of the Year.

Weird Al

Author: Nathan Rabin
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1613123833
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Book Description
A “fun and colorful” biography of the accordion-toting comedy legend—with rare photos, lyrics, lists, tweets, and more from Al himself (Publishers Weekly). The undisputed king of pop-culture parody, “Weird Al” Yankovic has sold more comedy recordings than any other artist in history, receiving three Grammy Awards (and fourteen nominations) in the process. This is a comprehensive illustrated tribute to this icon of the American humor landscape, the man behind such classics as “Eat It,” “Amish Paradise,” and “White & Nerdy.” Covering more than three decades of hilarious songs, videos, and concert performances, and his life story in words and pictures—and featuring an introduction, lists, tweets, and photo captions from Yankovic himself—Weird Al: The Book is the ultimate companion piece to an extraordinary career. “Part biography and part pop culture museum . . . a treat.” —Huffington Post

Red Sauce, Whiskey and Snow

Author: August Kleinzahler
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429952385
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 102

Book Description
This is a book of jazzy, edgy, adventuresome poems from the author of Earthquake Weather and Like Cities, Like Storms. Ever aware, ever vivid, ever focused, Kleinzahler's are some of the finest lyrics being produced in American poetry today. "Pieces of ordinary talk are Kleinzahler's strong suit," as Helen Vendler observed in Parnassus, "because they occur in his glancing, alert rhythms. . . . [His] jaunty skips and riffs solace the ear." Red Sauce, Whiskey and Snow presents an experimental poetry of exceptional wit and control.

Green Sees Things in Waves

Author: August Kleinzahler
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1466880759
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 100

Book Description
1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In Green Sees Things in Waves, a powerful and inventive collection, August Kleinzahler succeeds in creating a new idiom for American lyric poetry that captures the velocity and swerves of contemporary life in the city. He pushes the language very hard to get there, and the results are breathtaking: an angular, propulsive poetry that transforms character, voice, and setting into buzzing, luminous events.

LGBTQ Las Vegas

Author: Dennis McBride
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1467127167
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 96

Book Description
Being gay in Las Vegas until the 1990s was a felony with a hefty fine and long prison sentence. The Las Vegas LGBTQ community did not organize to fight for its rights until the late 1970s and by the early 1980s had made headway, before AIDS stopped their momentum. While AIDS was devastating, it taught compassion, self-reliance, and political savvy. By 2017, Las Vegas was a city among the most welcoming of the nation's queer community.

Weird Las Vegas and Nevada

Author: Joe Oesterle
Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company
ISBN: 9781402739408
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Book Description
A travel guide to Las Vegas that also focusses on the neglection of its historic places.

Leaving Vegas

Author: Gary Jenkins
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781540779250
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Book Description
Blackmail. Bombs. Hit teams and executions. Skimming of casino profits. Illegal sports gaming. These tactics were "business as usual" for members of the mafia in the United States in the 1970s. But a team of F.B.I. agents and Kansas City Police Department detectives decided, in those corrupt days, to take advantage of new court-ordered wiretap privileges to curtail some of the graft in that city. The result of those efforts was the end of the mob's domination of Las Vegas casino operations, the imprisonment of key players and the decimation of the mafia's influence in Kansas City, Chicago, Milwaukee and Las Vegas. An ex-cop from Kansas City was part of the team that tackled the mafia corruption. He compiled this account of the surveillance efforts by including verbatim wiretap transcripts that tell the story of those days in the words of the mob's key operatives themselves. Leaving Vegas takes you behind the scenes, detailing the drama from the point of view of the surveillance teams listening in on the conversations, as well as providing the flavor of the relationships between the mobsters. Prison sentences and an end to the bulk of the mob violence in Kansas City wrote a "happy" ending to this story. Jenkins provides plenty of context to this milestone investigation, as well as photos of the key players and surveillance locations.

Relearning from Las Vegas

Author: Aron Vinegar
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816650608
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Book Description
Evaluates for the first time one of the foundational works in architecture criticism. Immediately on its publication in 1972, Learning from Las Vegas, by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, was hailed as a transformative work in the history and theory of architecture, liberating those in architecture who were trying to find a way out of the straitjacket of architectural orthodoxies. Resonating far beyond the professional and institutional boundaries of the field, the book contributed to a thorough rethinking of modernism and was subsequently taken up as an early manifestation and progenitor of postmodernism.