BOOK
The history of occupational health in the United States is a history of gambling with lives. Workers gambled with their lives for a paycheck. Employers gambled with their employees' lives for a profit. Governments gambled with their residents' lives to promote industrial and postindustrial development. There is no better example of this in American history than in Las Vegas.
In April 2009, the spotlight was on Las Vegas when the Pulitzer committee awarded its public service prize to the Las Vegas Sun for its coverage of the high number of fatalities on Las Vegas Strip construction sites. The newspaper attributed failures in safety policy to the recent “exponential growth in the Las Vegas market.” In fact, since the Las Vegas town site's founding in 1905, rapid development has always strained health and safety standards.
Gambling with Lives examines the work, hazards, and health and safety programs in greater Las Vegas from the early building of the railroad through the construction of the Hoover Dam, chemical manufacturing during World War II, nuclear testing, and postindustrial work on the Las Vegas Strip. Updated through 2020, Gambling with Lives is a revised and expanded edition of A History of Occupational Health and Safety that includes new and expanded discussions on the 1918 influenza and COVID-19 pandemics, work-related musculoskeletal disorders in the hospitality industry, the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival shooting, and Legionnaires’ disease outbreaks at the resorts.
Since few places in the United States contain this mixture of industrial and postindustrial sites, greater Las Vegas offers unique opportunities to evaluate American occupational health from the 20th to the 21st Century, and reminds us all about the relevancy of protecting workers.
“Gambling with Lives is a stark reminder that boomtowns are built on the backs of working people and that progress in Las Vegas has come at a high cost. Michelle Follette Turk’s well-researched study takes us from the earliest days of Las Vegas to the construction of the modern Strip that was literally built at break-neck speed. This book is a must-read for those interested in the often-concealed history of Southern Nevada.”
John L. Smith, author of Saints, Sinners and Sovereign Citizens: The Endless War Over the West’s Public Lands
Praise for the first edition A History of Occupational Health and Safety
“This well-documented and knowledgeable work spans an entire century of occupational safety and health in one fascinating and revealing corner of the American West: the greater Las Vegas area. No other work in the history of American industrial or occupational health does quite what it does. Following a particular place over this long a time span, it shows how far we’ve come in grappling with workplace dangers, but also how little progress we’ve made."
Christopher Sellers, Director of the Center for the Study of Inequality and Social Justice at Stony Brook University
"A History of Occupational Health and Safety is a significant addition to the scholarship of hazards and health in the American West. Turk offers an engaging interdisciplinary study that is useful to academic and practitioner readers alike."
Western Historical Quarterly
David D. Vail. "A History of Occupational Health and Safety: From 1905 to the Present." By Michelle Follette Turk (review). Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 50, Issue 4, Winter 2019, Pages 432–433.
"Turk effectively makes the case that centering place in studies of occupational health and safety adds richness and depth to the story. This is a worthwhile study with which future scholars of the subject will need to reckon."
Environmental History
Erik Loomis. "A History of Occupational Health and Safety: From 1905 to the Present." By Michelle Follette Turk (review). Environmental History, Volume 24, Issue 1, July 2019, Pages 638-640.
"The book’s final chapter is likely to be the most interesting for contemporary business and medical historians. Not only is it a fascinating overview of the dangers of the postindustrial service sector workplace, including exposure to secondhand cigarette smoke and the perils of irregular work hours on workers’ physical health and social relationships, but she also includes factors unique to Las Vegas, such as increased access to alcohol and gambling leading to addictive behavior and animal attacks from live stage shows… the book more than accomplishes what it sets out to do by providing a study that examines more than a century of occupational health in a specific locale and makes a significant new contribution to the history of occupational health and the business history of medicine."
Buisness History Review
Andrew T. Simpson. "A History of Occupational Health and Safety: From 1905 to the Present." By Michelle Follette Turk (review). Business History Review 93, no. 2 (2019): 423–425.
"Turk does an excellent job of providing the political, economic, and social background of the various industries she examines. The book also furnishes excellent analyses of how occupational health issues in Nevada relate to general issues of public health and health care in that state, and to more general trends in occupational health in the United States. She also demonstrates that in addition to private industry, state and federal governments often did not protect workers, but instead cooperated with hazardous industries both to promote economic development and, in the case of the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, to promote national security."
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Gerald Markowitz. "A History of Occupational Health and Safety: From 1905 to the Present." By Michelle Follette Turk (review)." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 93, no. 1 (2019): 132-134.
The history of occupational health in the United States is a history of gambling with lives. Workers gambled with their lives for a paycheck. Employers gambled with their employees' lives for a profit. Governments gambled with their residents' lives to promote industrial and postindustrial development. There is no better example of this in American history than in Las Vegas.
In April 2009, the spotlight was on Las Vegas when the Pulitzer committee awarded its public service prize to the Las Vegas Sun for its coverage of the high number of fatalities on Las Vegas Strip construction sites. The newspaper attributed failures in safety policy to the recent “exponential growth in the Las Vegas market.” In fact, since the Las Vegas town site's founding in 1905, rapid development has always strained health and safety standards.
Gambling with Lives examines the work, hazards, and health and safety programs in greater Las Vegas from the early building of the railroad through the construction of the Hoover Dam, chemical manufacturing during World War II, nuclear testing, and postindustrial work on the Las Vegas Strip. Updated through 2020, Gambling with Lives is a revised and expanded edition of A History of Occupational Health and Safety that includes new and expanded discussions on the 1918 influenza and COVID-19 pandemics, work-related musculoskeletal disorders in the hospitality industry, the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival shooting, and Legionnaires’ disease outbreaks at the resorts.
Since few places in the United States contain this mixture of industrial and postindustrial sites, greater Las Vegas offers unique opportunities to evaluate American occupational health from the 20th to the 21st Century, and reminds us all about the relevancy of protecting workers.
“Gambling with Lives is a stark reminder that boomtowns are built on the backs of working people and that progress in Las Vegas has come at a high cost. Michelle Follette Turk’s well-researched study takes us from the earliest days of Las Vegas to the construction of the modern Strip that was literally built at break-neck speed. This book is a must-read for those interested in the often-concealed history of Southern Nevada.”
John L. Smith, author of Saints, Sinners and Sovereign Citizens: The Endless War Over the West’s Public Lands
Praise for the first edition A History of Occupational Health and Safety
“This well-documented and knowledgeable work spans an entire century of occupational safety and health in one fascinating and revealing corner of the American West: the greater Las Vegas area. No other work in the history of American industrial or occupational health does quite what it does. Following a particular place over this long a time span, it shows how far we’ve come in grappling with workplace dangers, but also how little progress we’ve made."
Christopher Sellers, Director of the Center for the Study of Inequality and Social Justice at Stony Brook University
"A History of Occupational Health and Safety is a significant addition to the scholarship of hazards and health in the American West. Turk offers an engaging interdisciplinary study that is useful to academic and practitioner readers alike."
Western Historical Quarterly
David D. Vail. "A History of Occupational Health and Safety: From 1905 to the Present." By Michelle Follette Turk (review). Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 50, Issue 4, Winter 2019, Pages 432–433.
"Turk effectively makes the case that centering place in studies of occupational health and safety adds richness and depth to the story. This is a worthwhile study with which future scholars of the subject will need to reckon."
Environmental History
Erik Loomis. "A History of Occupational Health and Safety: From 1905 to the Present." By Michelle Follette Turk (review). Environmental History, Volume 24, Issue 1, July 2019, Pages 638-640.
"The book’s final chapter is likely to be the most interesting for contemporary business and medical historians. Not only is it a fascinating overview of the dangers of the postindustrial service sector workplace, including exposure to secondhand cigarette smoke and the perils of irregular work hours on workers’ physical health and social relationships, but she also includes factors unique to Las Vegas, such as increased access to alcohol and gambling leading to addictive behavior and animal attacks from live stage shows… the book more than accomplishes what it sets out to do by providing a study that examines more than a century of occupational health in a specific locale and makes a significant new contribution to the history of occupational health and the business history of medicine."
Buisness History Review
Andrew T. Simpson. "A History of Occupational Health and Safety: From 1905 to the Present." By Michelle Follette Turk (review). Business History Review 93, no. 2 (2019): 423–425.
"Turk does an excellent job of providing the political, economic, and social background of the various industries she examines. The book also furnishes excellent analyses of how occupational health issues in Nevada relate to general issues of public health and health care in that state, and to more general trends in occupational health in the United States. She also demonstrates that in addition to private industry, state and federal governments often did not protect workers, but instead cooperated with hazardous industries both to promote economic development and, in the case of the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, to promote national security."
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Gerald Markowitz. "A History of Occupational Health and Safety: From 1905 to the Present." By Michelle Follette Turk (review)." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 93, no. 1 (2019): 132-134.