Praise for Dream City:
“The quintessential Las Vegas novel. Unger dwells in the details, and his evocation of the dream—and its painstaking construction—is utterly convincing. Build it and they will come—or maybe not.”
—T.C. Boyle (author of Blue Skies and Drop City, and winner of the P.E.N. Faulkner award for World’s End).
“What a smart and compelling way to investigate the moral slipperiness of Las Vegas— through building and construction, through all those involved in the making and unmaking of this city. Unger portrays these everchanging landscapes and the players within them with elegance and insight."
—Aimee Bender (author of An Invisible Sign of My Own and The Butterfly Lampshade.)
“Doug Unger goes behind the scenes in the real Las Vegas to find the Machiavellian intrigue lurking beneath the glittering surface. Dream City is to 21st century Las Vegas what Bonfire of the Vanities was to 20th century New York—a marvel and a cautionary tale. This is the quintessential novel about America’s most fascinating and archetypal city, where greed and ambition also make room for love and redemption.”
—Sally Denton (author of The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America and The Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land).
“Douglas Unger’s Dream City is a splendorous example of Borges’ dictum that stories are about situations and novels are about characters. Dream City is also about Las Vegas, the traps of uncontrolled greed, and the futile attempts of one C.D. Reinhart to try to make things right. Carefully written, brilliantly structured, Dream City is hard to put down.”
—Pablo Medina (author of The Cuban Comedy and The Island Kingdom).
“I don’t think anybody has ever written about Vegas with this kind of depth and understanding and heart. Doug Unger knows its history and sees its future. Dream City reads as something important in our understanding of the lives and hearts of the new West. What a deep pleasure this book is.”
—Charles Bock (author of Beautiful Children and Alice & Oliver)