Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- About the Author -- List of Figures -- Chapter 1: Introduction: The Garden of the Hesperides and the Oasis in the Desert-Monte Carlo and the Las Vegas Strip -- 1.1 Casinos and Consumer Capitalism -- 1.2 Playing by the Rules: The Moral Economy of Gambling for the Middle Classes -- 1.3 "Rouge Gagne Souvent, Noir Quelquefois, Mais Blanc Gagne Toujours": The Blanc Clan of Monte Carlo -- 1.4 Coming to the Oasis: Casino Entrepreneurs Arrive in Las Vegas -- 1.5 Structure -- Chapter 2: Cities Only Capitalism Could Have Built -- 2.1 Arriving at Monte Carlo -- 2.2 Devising a Script for Monte Carlo -- 2.3 Scripting Via Transportation -- 2.4 Gardens for the Casino -- 2.5 Casino-Driven Urbanization -- 2.6 Exclusion -- 2.7 Las Vegas: Strip City and the Suburban Gambling Experience -- 2.7.1 Paradise: The Strip as Company Town -- 2.7.2 The Strip's Capitalist Urbanization -- 2.7.3 Exclusion -- 2.8 Conclusion -- Chapter 3: Monte Carlo Casino (1863-1911): Creating a Bourgeois Gambling Experience Under Capitalist Conditions -- 3.1 The Atrium: Transforming Visitors into Gamblers -- 3.2 The Theatre: Making Entertainment Work for the Production of Gambling Experiences -- 3.3 The Gambling Rooms: Controlling Consumption by Controlling Consumers -- 3.3.1 The "Kitchen": Gambling for the Masses in the Salle Mauresque and the Salle Garnier -- 3.3.2 The Sale Rose: Gender and the Casino as a Male Space -- 3.3.3 The Salles Touzet and Salle Médecine: Separating the Gambling Crowd -- 3.4 Conclusion -- Chapter 4: Las Vegas Casinos (1945-1976): Creating and Selling the American Gambling Experience -- 4.1 The Sin City Era (1950-1966): The Desert Inn and the Sands -- 4.1.1 Trendsetter: The Desert Inn -- 4.1.2 The Pinnacle: The Sands -- 4.2 Caesars Palace, Circus Circus: The Beginnings of Corporate Las Vegas (1966-1970).

Monte Carlo and Las Vegas have become synonymous with casino gambling. Both destinations featured it as part of a broad variety of leisure and consumption opportunities that normalized games of chance and created emotional atmospheres that supported the hedonistic aspects of gambling. Urban spaces and architecture were carefully designed to enable a rapid growth of the casino industry and produce experiences on previous unimaginable scale. Feeling Lucky, is a making of story, about cities which acquired a strange and captivating allure of mystery around them. It is more than a mere descriptive account, however. Combining urban history, the history of consumption, and sociological approaches it presents a compelling comparative history of Monte Carlo and the Las Vegas Strip between the 1860s and 1970s. Paul Franke takes the reader on a journey from arriving at the cities, through the carefully planned urban environments and into the famous casinos. The analysis follows the paths contemporary gamblers would have taken, right to the gambling tables and to the shifting gambling practices across a century. Franke shows that casino entrepreneurs succeeded in producing and selling gambling experiences by controlling spaces, adapt leisure practices and appeal to specific markets. Gamblers on the other hand regarded Monte Carlo and Las Vegas as places to engage in games of chance that would allow them to preserve their political, cultural, and moral identities. Paul Franke is an Assistant Professor at the Philipps University Marburg and Associated Researcher at Centre Marc Bloch, Germany. He specializes in the cultural history of markets and economies, urban history, and the history of gambling.

All or nothing? Nature in Chinese thought and the apophatic occident -- Nothing and the poetic making of sense -- Immanence: the last word? -- Universalism, or the nothing that is all -- An extra word on originality -- Intercultural dia-logue and its apophatic interstices -- Analytic table of contents