Nevada - Travel, Western United States - Travel Essays & Descriptions, Nevada - State & Local History, Regional Studies - Western U.S.

In Nevada

Name: In Nevada
Author: Lucy Gray
ISBN: 9780679454861

by Lucy Gray

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Overview

From David Thomson, the highly acclaimed author of Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles, comes a fiercely original work as vast and unique as the state it describes.

Nevada is the place where Samuel Clemens became Mark Twain, Frank Sinatra became Chairman of the Board, divorce became an industry and gambling an institution. It was a place that Kit Carson could explore, where Bugsy Siegel could dream, and Howard Hughes might hide. It's the government's favorite place to test nuclear weapons and store nuclear waste. It's a place, in short, of an impossible amalgam and improbable history, and Thomson has beaten all the odds with a stunning book that pieces it all together. In Nevada is a rich and fascinating work inescapably necessary for any student of the American West.

About the Author, Lucy Gray

David Thomson is the author of A Biographical Dictionary of Film (three editions), Beneath Mulholland: Thoughts on Hollywood and Its Ghosts, Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick, Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles, and three works of fiction: Suspects, Silver Light, and Warren Beatty and Desert Eyes. His writing has appeared in Film Comment, Movieline, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, and Esquire. Thomson lives in San Francisco with his wife and their two sons.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

It may come as a shock to learn that there's more to Nevada than Reno and Las Vegas. As Thomson's compulsive meanderings through the Sagebrush State make clear, there's a whole other Nevada out there--even if it's mostly just empty space. Not unlike the dense historiography of John McPhee, this impressionistic series of sketches gives readers the feeling of having a well-informed sidekick riding shotgun through sage-strewn stretches of Highway 376. Thomson augments his observations with judicious bits of local history, showing how the desolate region has paradoxically become the most rapidly growing state in the union. Drawing gamblers, real estate barons and UFO enthusiasts by the busload, Nevada boasts a long history of rough-edged prospector types looking to strike it rich. A concurrent tradition of off-handed violence has lingered ever since the newborn Nevada Territory built a prison as one of its first official acts. Thomson (Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles) clearly has an appetite for the gritty stage machinery behind the glossy showmanship. Thumbnail sketches abound of Steve Wynn, Frank Sinatra and lesser-known impresarios, alongside historical riffs on such places as Reno, the self-proclaimed "Biggest Little City in the World." To the crowded gaming tables and the stark mountains that surround them, Thomson brings an appealingly philosophical frame of mind, an ability to throw sophisticated musings--about transience, history, place--out into the landscape as if waiting to see if they will take root. Photos. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Thomson (author of a dictionary of film, biographies of several filmmakers, and some fictional works) traverses Nevada's wildness and weirdness, from its desolate landscape to its gambling, prostitution, easy divorces, no taxes, nuclear testing, and storage of nuclear waste and the infamous city of Las Vegas. Artful b&w photographs help capture the state of mind. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)