Books
Glenn Schaeffer has co-authored one book and has been featured in several books written about the “New Vegas.” He is currently working on his first novel and an “autofiction” of his teenage years growing up in California. Watch this space for their release.
Glenn Schaeffer reads from the book at Prairie Lights in Iowa City.
Featured book
We Wanted to be Writers
Life, Love, and Literature at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
We Wanted to be Writers is a rollicking and insightful blend of original interviews, commentary, advice, gossip, anecdotes, analyses, history, and asides with nearly thirty graduates and teachers at the now legendary Iowa Writers’ Workshop between 1974 and 1978. Among the talents that emerged in those years-writing, criticizing, drinking, and debating in the classrooms and barrooms of Iowa City-were the younger versions of writers who became John Irving, Jane Smiley, T. C. Boyle, Michelle Huneven, Allan Gurganus, Sandra Cisneros, Jayne Anne Phillips, Jennie Fields, Joy Harjo, Joe Haldeman, and many others. It is chock full of insights and a treasure trove of inspiration for all writers, readers, history lovers, and anyone who ever “wanted to be a writer.” Jane Smiley on the Iowa writers’ workshop: “In that period, the teachers tended to be men of a certain age, with the idea that competition was somehow the key-the Norman Mailer period. The story was that if you disagreed with Norman, or gave him a bad review, he’d punch you in the nose. You were supposed to get in fights in restaurants.”
T.C. Boyle on his short story “Drowning”: “I got $25 for it, which was wonderful . . . You know, getting $25 for the product of your own brain? You could buy a lot of beer in Iowa City back then for that.”
- John Irving
- Marvin Bell
- Sandra Cisneros
- Jane Smiley
- T.C. Boyle
- Joy Harjo
- Allan Gurganus
- Don Wallace
- Michele Huneven
- Jayne Anne Phillips
- Robin Green
- Joe Haldeman
Glenn Schaeffer speaks to KNPR about We Wanted To Be Writers and the experience at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Books featuring Glenn
Winner Takes All
Excerpts from the book
“As the plans for the Mirage were being drawn up, Glenn Schaeffer sent a memo to his boss at Circus Circus, Bill Bennett. Schaeffer proposed building a casino at the southernmost end of the Las Vegas Strip.”
Super Casino
Excerpts from the book
“Schaeffer had gotten Circus Circus Enterprises the millions in cash that it needed from investment banks at a time when no repected financial institution outside Nevada had ever dared risk as much as a penny in casinos.”
“In different ways, Steve Wynn and Glenn Schaeffer both played critical roles in the launching of the first super casinos and the Las Vegas boom.”
High Stakes
Excerpts from the book
“Schaeffer really had been the heir apparent, with an emphasis on “apparent.” And even Phil Hevener, a guy who knows a thousand times more about the gaming industry than I do, said that Glenn Schaeffer was ‘the face of gaming on Wall Street’.”