Before "Bugsy" Siegel" opened the Flamingo casino and created the Las Vegas Strip, the Mob was hard at work stealing Downtown casinos like the Las Vegas Club and the El Cortez from their original owners. Reno casino owners resorted to arson and murder to keep their money flowing, and they had Lake Tahoe casinos in their pocket too!By the time "Bugsy" was gunned-down in Beverly Hills, his Flamingo was a stunning success, filling the Mob's coffers with "skim" money and filling the political connections with "slush" money.Nevada's Golden Age of Gambling is a photo-rich history of the casinos from 1931 to 1981. There was a lot more going on behind the scenes than America knew about, and those stories are here, from the building of empires in Reno and Lake Tahoe to Las Vegas and a dozen other Nevada casino towns.Stories detail how the casinos were built, who the major gaming pioneers were, and how they managed to build Nevada into the greatest gaming empire in the world.Chapters include the history of casinos and their founders from Bill Harrah and "Pappy" Smith, to Moe Dalitz, "Bugsy" Siegel, and dozens of others.