Greetings from Las Vegas Cover

Greetings from Las Vegas

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Greetings from Las Vegas CoverGreetings from Las Vegas
By Peter Moruzzi
Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith, 2019
Hardcover, 176 pages. $30

Reviewed by Douglas C. Towne

I’ve finally found a roadside book that inspires me to skip the casinos and go to church instead on my next trip to Las Vegas.

Not for a confessional about any activities in Sin City, mind you. My misdeeds have been minor: lingering a tad too long at the complimentary Bloody Mary fountain at the El Morocco or using fireworks to ward off evil spirits at the Stardust, two long-demolished gambling halls.

Ghost Signs: Clues to Downtown New York’s Past

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Ghost Signs: Clues to Downtown New York’s Past
By Frank Mastropolo

Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer Publishing, 2019 Hardcover, 128 pages. $19.99

Reviewed by Ronald Ladouceur

For crying out loud, you’re in Manhattan, look up. No, not at the new supertall or other showy structure trying to command your attention. But instead at the weathered, broken, and graffitied bits of commercial history that still cling to the City’s gritty surfaces. As Frank Mastropolo demonstrates in Ghost Signs: Clues to Downtown New York’s Past, you’ll be richly rewarded, for these artifacts, invisible until they aren’t, are portals in time.

As they say, every picture tells a story.

Q&A: Alison Isenberg on Downtown America

Book Reviews, SCA Journal OnlineLeave a comment

As part of our commitment to exploration of the scholarly history of the American roadside as it relates to issues of race, class and gender, we proudly present this Q&A with Alison Isenberg, author of Downtown America.

From the Q&A: Downtown America was once the vibrant urban center romanticized in the Petula Clark song — a place where the lights were brighter, where people went to spend their money and forget their worries. But in the second half of the twentieth century, “downtown” became a shadow of its former self, succumbing to economic competition and commercial decline. And the death of Main Streets across the country came to be seen as sadly inexorable, like the passing of an aged loved one.