5 Must Read Books About Las Vegas

4. 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."