This page will feature a list of the hundreds of Nevada gaming pioneers I interviewed during this half-century research project. Along with each person’s name will be a description of his or her relevant profession and the dates of my interviews, all of which lasted at least two hours. This page will also have lists of all the related documents, books, and magazine articles I read during my vast research project.

When my next history book is published, these lists will be placed on this web page. Since these interviewee, documents, books, and magazine article lists will be the same for all three books coming in this series, I am placing them here instead of at the end of my books to lower the price of my print books. Print book publishers charge a fee for printing each page, so this change will reduce the print cost, and also the sales price, for each book by more than $2. The goal is to supply the reader all the relevant historical source material, while keeping the print book purchase price as low as possible. My extensive endnotes are related specifically to the material in each book, and they will continue to be included at the end of each book.

Each of my next three historical books about the development of the Nevada gambling industry and the influence of organized crime will cover a different era, as described in the next three paragraphs.

1- The manuscript I am currently writing covers Nevada’s early casinos up to 1950. Its time periods and subjects are described in the navigator at the top of this page titled Next History Book Coming Soon.

2- The book following it will cover the Nevada casino boom of the 1950s and 1960s. I call this the Golden Era, because the casino operations were exceptional and the gambling and entertainment experiences were the most enjoyable and fun of any era.

3- My final history in this series will explore the diverse types of casino ownership during the 1970s and 1980s, until the beginning of the Megaresort era. In this period, tycoons Howard Hughes and Kirk Kerkorian and public corporations led by Hilton Hotels invested in gambling resorts for the first time. Coinciding with these new ownership developments, major organized crime gangs took over ownership of some major casino resorts, as fictionalized in the movie “Casino” (1995). Alongside this diverse group of owners were colorful individual entrepreneurs who competed effectively with all of them.

Each of these three books presents a unique era, with very distinct casino tourist markets; national economic trends; political, legislative, judicial, and gaming control policies and actions; and casino ownership and leadership.

© Bill Friedman, 2020