As you begin your holiday shopping, please don't forget-Gambling on a Dream: The Classic Las Vegas Strip 1930-1955.

If you love or know someone who also loves Las Vegas history, the Las Vegas Strip and/or the hotels that used to be there, this book makes a perfect gift. 

Everyone thinks they know the history of the Las Vegas Strip but the real story is one that many people will be surprised to learn that they know only parts of the story. Want to know what was there before the Bellagio, the Wynn and the Encore, the SLS, the Venetian, or those empty plots of land that look out of place? Why is the Flamingo one of the oldest and most surviving hotels on the boulevard?

A detailed history of each the first ten hotels on the famed boulevard-from conception to what happened to them, this book also has rarely seen images and video clips featuring the men and women who worked there, played there and helped make Las Vegas the Entertainment Capital of the World.

Read the detailed histories of the first ten hotels on the Las Vegas Strip, including the El Rancho Vegas, Hotel Last Frontier, Flamingo, Thunderbird, Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn, Sahara, Sands, Royal Nevada, Riviera and the Dunes. Included in these histories are the architectural designs, the neon signage and how each of the hotels evolved.

The dreamers, who saw the future like few others and who built these hotels, helped turn a five-mile stretch of blacktop highway into the Entertainment Capital of the World.

This is the story of the first twenty-five years of the Classic Las Vegas Strip-how it began, and how it grew.

Just $4.99.

Available for Mac laptops and iPad users on the iTunes Store, for Kindle and Fire Tablets it's available on Amazon and for Nook readers, it is available on NookPress.

For direct links to the Itunes store, Amazon and NookPress, go here.

How many of these do you remember?

We saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Hot Rock and on one particular New Year's Eve, The Poseidon Adventure at the wonderful Fox Theater.  Took the bus all the way from Charleston Heights. Afterwards, we went across the street to Macayo Vegas for Mexican food. I took guitar lessons at Ted Vesley's Music Store, also across the street.

How about you?

We had a Woolco at the corner of W. Charleston and Decatur. It was a giant store (today it is a Walmart). In the early 1970s, an underground blast at the Nevada Test Site rattled the Las Vegas Valley so badly it took out the front display windows.

Across the street (kitty corner) from the Woolco. Always loved that signage! (today it is a Walgreen's)

Across W. Charleston Blvd. from Nevada Savings, this Zick and Sharp building has always been a bank building but not always a Bank of America. I had my first checking account at this bank.

The wonderful Hill Top Supper Club out on the way to Mt. Charleston. They had frog legs on the menu, real frog legs.

Vegas Village in Commercial Square

Hit the comments and share your memories with us!