The Silver State

A History of Nevada

A Sweeping History of the Great State of Nevada

From ancient Indigenous peoples to the Comstock Lode, from mob-run casinos to Tesla's Gigafactory, Nevada's history reads like an improbable fever dream. This is the story of America's most unlikely state—a place that shouldn't exist but refuses to disappear. Built on silver strikes and gambling, quickie divorces and atomic tests, Nevada has reinvented itself more times than any other state, turning vices into virtues and making industries from what others banned.

The Silver State traces Nevada's journey from desert wilderness to swing-state crucible, exploring how a harsh landscape shaped cultures of resilience and audacity. Meet the Paiute and Shoshone who mastered the Great Basin, the miners who built Virginia City into the West's wildest boomtown, the mobsters who created Las Vegas, and the tech entrepreneurs betting on Reno's renaissance. Discover how Abraham Lincoln rushed Nevada to statehood, how Hoover Dam transformed the Southwest, and how a state with 85 percent federal land became a symbol of Western independence.

Nevada's story is America's story distilled to its essence—ambitious, diverse, reckless, and stubbornly hopeful. This is history written in neon and sagebrush, a tale of constant reinvention in the land that never stops rolling the dice.