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, distinguished professor emeritus of English and writer in residence emeritus, University of Southern California, author of Blue Skies: A Novel

 “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 The Butterfly Lampshade: A Novel, longlisted for the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award

“Doug 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: A Novel

“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 twenty-first century Las Vegas what Bonfire of the Vanities was to twentieth 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 Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land

“Doug Unger’s Dream City captures that most American place, Las Vegas, in a most American period of growth and excess. Unger plunges his readers into a fictional account of a real transformation, in which a sleepy gambling town first becomes the brightest place on earth and then the hardest-hit metropolis in the country. Through his main character, a somehow naïve yet fully complicit hotel executive, the narrator deftly creates two realities: the anything-goes, win-at-all-costs giddy world of those raking in the cash, and the soullessness of a success measured only by wealth. Is this cautionary tale – an insider’s account of the rise and fall of Sin City – the canary in the coal mine for twenty-first century America?”

 —Laura McBride, author of We Are Called To Rise: A Novel and The Midnight Room: A Novel

"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: A Novel and Alice & Oliver: A Novel

“I was worried about the subject. Everyone is bored with Vegas as mobster playground—and “Grand Theft Auto” makes a book in that genre quaint and passé. Unger’s book is something else entirely. It’s just stunning. By putting mid-life middle class malaise into a planet of G-strings, 24–hour entertainment and con-artist "entrepreneurs," it’s simply a book I couldn’t stop reading―it’s real estate fever and busloads of desperate seekers of happiness on a budget hoping that ‘three coins can change their lives.’ The Great American Casino.”

—Greg Palast, author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, broadcaster for the BBC, and frequent contributor to The Guardian

"Scholars and historians of Vegas will avidly read Dream City. Unger is a novelist of the highest order–in ambition as well as craft."

—Christopher Coake, English professor and program director of the University of Nevada, Reno MFA program, author of You Came Back: A Novel

• Exposé and insider story of Las Vegas during the boom years

• A tale of midlife crisis that pits the chase for money against humane values

• A cautionary tale of postmodern America