The Arnold Shaw Popular Music Research Center at UNLV hosts authors featured in this collection of essays. The book examines how music-making and soundscapes shape our city. Treating topics ranging from Cher to Cirque du Soleil, the contributors delve into the following:

• How music and musicians factored in the early development of Vegas’s image
• The role of local communities of musicians and Strip mainstays in sustaining tensions between belief and disbelief
• The ways aging showroom stars provide a sense of timelessness that inoculates visitors against the outside world
• The link connecting fantasies of sexual prowess and democracy with the musical values of Liberace and others
• The echoes and energy generated by the idea of Las Vegas as it travels across the country.