false 7072981 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg

"An unprecedented up-close-and-personal look at the trio of tycoons whose high-stakes gambles -- in business -- make Sin City soar.

Steve Wynn. Kirk Kerkorian. Dr. Gary Loveman. The first two are world-famous for their flamboyant, often outrageous efforts to dominate Las Vegas. But it's the third --an economist from Harvard Business School, unknown even to most of the guests at his high-profile casinos -- who may now have the most impact. In Winner Takes All, Christina Binkley, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, explores how these three magnates are building a bigger and better Las Vegas and how their influence is spreading beyond the city's borders.

Meet the winners:

-- Steve Wynn is the visionary behind the Mirage, the Bellagio, and the $2.7 billion Wynn Las Vegas. Loud and passionate, with a tragic backstory -- a world-renowned art collector who is slowly going blind from retinitis pigmentosa--Wynn is often called the architect of modern Las Vegas.

-- Kirk Kerkorian, who is in his late eighties, is a shy, sly tactician, but his status as a billionaire deal maker who owns half the strip -- and his history as nemesis to Howard Hughes --keeps him in the forefront of Las Vegas, wheeling and dealing.

-- Dr. Gary Loveman, the CEO of Harrah's Entertainment, Inc., represents a new, more populist future for Las Vegas, one in which gamblers will be carefully culled from databases rather than lured by flash. Loveman approaches the city as though it were a Harvard case study. On the verge of becoming Las Vegas's -- and possibly the world's -- biggest gambling titan, he refuses to even live there.]]> 7072981 1 7326703 2008 0 0 0 0 1008552 3.85 39 18 1222197 4.14 69 6 8 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=7072981