You’ve cited five books that take us from mid-century to modern day. Let’s start with a reminder of what Nevada was before the neon on the strip started to outshine the rest of the state. Tell us about the memoir of Phyllis Barber, How I Got Culture.

It’s a unique book. First, a woman wrote it – men write most books about this town. Second, it’s about someone who grew up mostly in Boulder City but also in Las Vegas, someone who had a normal upbringing. A lot of the literature on Vegas is about strange dysfunctional characters, even clichés. I think what I like most about this book is just how unexpected it is. It’s a beautifully written memoir about a young Mormon coming of age in the Las Vegas of the 1950s.

What does this book tell us about the state that surrounds the strip and the friction between the state’s Mormon roots and the mores of its gambling centres?

She grew up in a Mormon family while Vegas was becoming a sacrilegious place in a lot of ways and she struggled with religion. It’s not one of those over the top stories – it’s a very minimalist tale about growing up here and struggles with normal stuff like trying to make the dance team at high school. But it’s written so beautifully that the story carries you along and it does give you a sense of the time and the place.

Mormons don’t have quite the influence in Nevada that they used to have. They are influential in law, banking and other businesses but not as influential in tourism or gaming.

The Green Felt Jungle, by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ed Reid and Ovid Demaris, exposes the underground criminal activity that undergirded the development of the gaming industry in Las Vegas. Please introduce us to the book, first published in 1963, starting with its title.

The opening line is: “Las Vegas is a city in statistics only. In every other respect it’s a jungle.” The green felt refers to the covering of the gaming tables. The book documents the corruption in the city during the 1950s and the connection between the Mob and many hotel-casinos.

As the opening sentence suggests, it’s kind of pulpy. But it’s also good old-fashioned investigative journalism. Back in the day, muckraking was pretty dangerous. Few were really willing to take on the Mob – that could lead to some bad situations, even death. We don’t even see this kind of writing in Las Vegas very often any more. Now we have a corporate mob that cause publications to fear losing advertising, which seems to be as frightening to them as a threat to break legs. So looking at this book now, it really stands out as good old-fashioned investigative journalism that we don’t see enough of nowadays, particularly in Las Vegas. Plus there’s some personality and vibrancy to the writing which I appreciate.

Can you give me a sense of the pulp that readers will find within the book about great mob figures?

Benny Binion and Bugsy Siegel were like founding fathers for the city. A lot of criminal types were able to come here and not just conduct business but also have a public persona and become active members in the communities.

Casino billionaires like Steve Wynn seem to have displaced mobsters like Bugsy Siegel as the dominant sin city figures. Is organised crime still important to the functioning of the city? And how has the rise of casino billionaires affected the city?

One of the myths about the city is that the Mob still runs the place. Locals kind of laugh at that. Most of us know that in the 1960s and 70s Howard Hughes started buying up these casinos and buying out the Mob. That led the way to corporations taking over casinos. So most locals know that the old mob is gone and that the corporate mob has taken over. You’ll even hear long-time locals lament the fact that organised crime is no longer in charge of the town. A common refrain is things were better when the Mob ran things – meaning crime was isolated to the mobsters knocking each other off in cities outside Las Vegas.

People like Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn seem very influential in the city, politically. But one complaint locals make, not specifically about Wynn and Adelson necessarily but just about these corporations in general, is that they set up shop here and make billions of dollars but not enough money is put back into the community. So behind a billion-dollar resort you’ll have a playground that is falling apart or a school that’s underachieving. That’s one of the frustrations many locals have.

Onto Hunter S Thompson’s fictionalised account of a man and his attorney’s extended drug and alcohol fuelled visit. It was written in 1971 and has been selling well ever since. Tell us about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

It’s one of my favourite books and probably my favourite Las Vegas-related book. Hunter S Thompson came out here in the early 70s to cover the Mint 400 off-road race for Sports Illustrated. He ended up writing a 10,000-word riff on his visit. In 1971, Jann Wenner ultimately published two long sections of it in Rolling Stone. Those two stories were the foundation for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

We have so many reporters that parachute into town, spend two to three days on the Strip and think they know enough to write the definitive piece about Las Vegas. Thompson came out here for weeks at a time and was able to capture the essence of the city. The language is raw and unique and funny and I just think it’s a masterpiece, an American classic.