The Real Las Vegas

David Littlejohn is Professor Emeritus of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He has written or edited eleven previous books, and is the West Coast arts correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. He lives in Kensington, California.

"In a shattering series of quick-cut profiles and scenes, Littlejohn's team of crack reporters highlight the voices of off-the-beaten-track Las Vegas--homeless denizens of desperate shelters, residents of the soft pogroms of North (Hispanic) and West (African-American) Vegas, the aimless teens, bingo junkies, sex workers, sagebrush rebels, and real estate speculators who live and wither by the almighty buck, and the cops, union organizers and preachers whocontrol or mitigate the consequences of capitalism run amok. A gritty, people-centered montage of our saddest American dream."--Peter Nabokov"There's a strong chance that Las Vegas--boisterous, demotic, a figment of its own imagination, the Elvis Presley of American cities--may be the last metropolis to develop from scratch in these United States. David Littlejohn and his reporters have done a brilliant job decoding the complexities of America's neon-lit post-modern urban enigma. Viva Las Vegas!-- Kevin Starr, State Librarian of California and author of America and the California Dreamseries