Everybody loves a hustler: gamblers, hucksters and con artists occupy a distinctive place in our collective imagination. The same goes for a self-made man.

Steve Wynn, the ruthless, hugely successful casino developer whose Las Vegas empire at one point included the Mirage, the Golden Nugget, and Treasure Island, is such a man.

In the spring of 1964, Wynn took over a struggling bingo palace in Wayson's Corner, Maryland. He was twenty-one years old. The business was left to him by his father, recently dead, along with over $200,000 in personal gambling debts. By 1992 — and several casinos later — Wynn's corporation was worth an estimated $1.7 billion. The golden boy who started out calling bingo numbers in Wayson's Corner now stood as one of the wealthiest and most powerful figures in Nevada.

This is his story — the unauthorized biography Steve Wynn never wanted the world to read.

When Running Scared was originally announced in hardcover, Wynn filed a libel lawsuit in Nevada against Barricade Books for its catalog description of him, and in Kentucky aginst the book itself. The trial took place in Las Vegas before a judge whose husband, after the trial, was given a high-paying executive job in one of Wynn's casinos. Guess who won the lawsuit.

The real question, of course, is what does Steve Wynn so desperately want to hide?

To his adoring public, Wynn has always acted the benevolent Las Vegas promoter — appearing in commercials with Frank Sinatra, posing for photographs with politicians, schmoozing with Michael Jackson. His elaborate PR machine would have us believe that his meteoric rise to the top was a result of ambition, hard work, and charismatic leadership alone. But Wynn has been accused of shadow-waltzing precariously close to the wise-guy underworld that — at least in Las Vegas — is said to decide who stayed, and who didn't.

Running Scared documents Wynn's rapid rise to wealth and power. It examines the rumor about his connections to the Genovese crime family. It explores his stormy relationship with Donald Trump. It explains why a confidential Scotland Yard report deprived him of a license to open a casino in London. And of course, it tells about his partnership with the man who was there to finance it all, Michael Milken, the six-time convicted felon of Drexel Burnham junk-bond infamy.

More relevant than ever, Running Scared is a meticulously researched biography (including hundreds of primary sources) of an eccentric, vindictive billionaire: here, Steve Wynn is brought to life in all his troubled glory.

John L. Smith is an award-winning columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. A fourth generation Nevadan, he lives in Las Vegas.

Lyle Stuart is the publisher of Barricade Books, which was forced into bankruptcy as a result of the libel judgement obtained by Steve Wynn. Stuart's long career in publishing spans five decades and includes national bestsellers such as The Rich and the Super-Rich, The Sensuous Woman, and A Woman Named Jackie, as well as numerous books on Las Vegas and gambling.

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