5 must read books about Las Vegas

Joan Didion, Play it as it lays

Represents an unrelenting examination of life in 1960s America, the ennui and emptiness of lost dreams, and a society in crisis. The novel itself floats on a kind of middle-ground, between ethical extremes, in the vast, barren spaces of the Mojave Desert, linking Las Vegas and Hollywood. It has been quoted as a combination of The Great Gatsby (by F. Scott Fitzgerald) and Less Than Zero (by Bret Easton Ellis). Intense and exciting, depicting a quiet emptiness and loss of hope: "I was raised to believe that what came in on the next roll would always be better than what went out on the last. I no longer believe that."