"A team of fifteen reporters led by David Littlejohn, together with prize-winning photojournalist Eric Gran, studied the "real" Las Vegas - the city beyond the Strip and Downtown - for the better part of a year.

They talked to teenagers (whose suicide and dropout rates frighten parents), senior citizens (many of whom spend their days playing bingo and the slots), Mexican immigrants (who build the new houses and clean the hotels), homeless people and angry blacks, as well as local police, active Christians, city officials, and prostitutes.

They looked into the local churches, the powerful labor unions, pawn shops, the real estate boom, defiant ranchers to the north, and dire predictions that the city is about to run out of water."--BOOK JACKET. "In this close-up investigation of the real lives being led in America's most tourist-jammed, gambling-driven city, readers will discover a Las Vegas very different from the one they may have seen or imagined."--BOOK JACKET.