A history, panorama and reverie on the great, empty but lively state of Nevada. It is a book based on travels; but is about people and society, absurd hope and unshakeable dread. For Nevada represents the best and the worst, the frontier paradise and the future abyss. It is a book about landscape, and enormous, desolate views; the silence of the places where nothing happens, and the sudden, total roar of a military plane flying at 50 feet and 2000 mph. It describes the various shades of ochre and mauve; the astonishing extremes of weather; the religion of water; and the blur of red and black on the roulette wheel.