New Castle’s Las Vegas Guys: Gangsters, Gamblers, and Dealers

Revel at the tales of these locals boys from Southwestern Pennsylvania going west to seek their Sin City dreams.

As turmoil rocked New Castle in the 1970s, a group of young men completed their military service and came home to a bleak future. Without college degrees or marketable skills, they found few options in Western Pennsylvania. Looking for a better life, they turned their eyes west.

Las Vegas promised women, gambling, excitement, and the chance to make a buck. Over their decades on the floors of Sin City’s casinos, they would rub shoulders with gangsters and stars and keep a sharp eye out for opportunity--and for card counters.

Based on hours of exclusive interviews, author Dale Perelman unfolds this cavalier group’s frolicking adventures as they navigated their way from the belly of the downtown Golden Gate to some of the Strip’s premier casinos, all while teetering along the right side of the law.

Dale Richard Perelman is a native of New Castle and the author of ten previous non-fiction books: Mountain of Light, The Regent, Centenarians, Lessons My Father Taught Me, Steel, Road to Rust, New Castle’s Kadunce Murders, The Scottish Rite Cathedral (co-authored with Rob Cummings), Death at the Cecil Hotel, and Chuck Tanner and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Perelman spent much of his previous career as the president of the King’s Jewelry chain. He is a graduate of Brown University, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and has a certificate of completion from the Yale University writer’s program.