'Winner Takes All' delivers inside look at Vegas history

ByABC News
March 30, 2008, 6:08 PM

— -- Wall Street Journal scribe Christina Binkley was on the scene for a crucial decade of Las Vegas history, chronicling a span during which the popular adult playground transformed itself from a crass theme park of resorts into a world-class destination run by conglomerates.

In Winner Takes All, Binkley writes what could be a doctoral dissertation on Vegas and the gambling beat. Binkley worked her sources up and down the Las Vegas Strip to craft a compact, informative and entertaining story.

Unfortunately, the book may be mistitled inasmuch as there was no ultimate "winner" in Las Vegas.

Binkley has the ability to simplify the machinations behind high-profile corporate buyouts. Readers get a backstage pass to view three important buyouts: Kirk Kerkorian's 2000 purchase of Steve Wynn's Mirage Resorts; MGM Mirage's 2004 buyout of Mandalay Resort Group; and Harrah's 2004 takeover of Caesars.

Binkley shines new light on an old story, revealing that Wynn forced Kerkorian's MGM Grand, which acquired Mirage Resorts, to pay $17 million for his residence, including a pair of decorative frogs for $766.09 and a 10-year-old garbage disposal for $287.04.

Competitive tussles

Binkley calls Winner a Wynn biography masquerading as a book about the competitive tussle reflected in the subtitle: Steve Wynn, Kirk Kerkorian, Gary Loveman and the Race to Own Las Vegas.

Wynn, developer of the Mirage, Bellagio and Wynn Las Vegas, is seen as filled with contradictory traits. In anecdote after anecdote, Binkley illustrates his magnanimity, egotism, eloquence, weirdness, humor, insecurity, pettiness. The fact she had terrific access to him did not tilt her evenhanded portrayal.

At times, she is deliciously dishy in a way that is unlikely to get another interview, as when she implies Wynn had cosmetic surgery.

If there is a bias here, though, it's toward those who gave Binkley access. Wynn did, so he occupies most of the book. Loveman granted her less, so he is depicted as the dull, underestimated yet brilliant operator of Harrah's whose staff worries about his girth.