Tear down your red velvet ropes, Las Vegas. The Stratosphere casino-hotel’s new marketing campaign, which masquerades as a cause, is appealing to a crowd of likely Las Vegas Strip visitors that’s less keen on nightclub bottle service or high-priced fine-dining and more interested in cheap drinks and freebies.

The civil rights movement in Las Vegas benefitted from major figures on the national stage — but we also produced some inspiring leaders of our own.

Las Vegas doesn’t get much credit for it, but it really is a literary sort of city. Think about all the times over the years that Las Vegas has served as fodder for authors, journalists, novelists and anybody else who felt moved to put pen to paper and tell us who we are and how we got here. In fact, there’s so much Las Vegas lit out there, the real problem is: Where does an inquisitive reader begin?