Las Vegas

Acclaimed poker writer and documentary filmmaker Jérôme Schmidt takes readers inside Las Vegas, where the line between winning and losing can disappear in a single night. “Once the sun is up, the city can burst into flames at any moment.” Las Vegas. Sin City and Marriage Capital of the World. An oasis of glitz and gaiety in the middle of a forbidding desert landscape. A hotbed of aspirations and desires and frustrations, of risks and rewards and constantly looming calamity. An accelerated, overstimulated, insomniac distillation of the American dream: anything can happen, and usually does.  Jérôme Schmidt first came to Vegas two decades ago as an observer, and has returned every year since—as an explorer, an adventure seeker, and finally a part-time local, drawn again and again into its shimmering vortex of gambling and vice, luxury and squalor. In this bold, inquisitive tour of the town, we veer off the Strip, where everything (literally) glows with the sense of possibility, and peek behind the spectacle at a city altogether stranger—and more human—than the legend suggests. Schmidt’s Las Vegas invites us into a city shaped not just by high rollers and legendary mobsters but also by showgirls and taxi drivers, architects and activists, foodies and fabulists, worshippers and scammers, all chasing their dreams and seeking their fortunes, knowing that ruin is never too far behind.  Translated from the French by Rhonda Mullins About TRAVEL WITH A WRITER Travel with a Writer begins with a simple idea: places become more interesting in the company of someone who knows them well. The series brings readers together with bestselling, award-winning, and acclaimed writers in places they know intimately. Some will already be familiar to English-language readers. Others are major literary voices in their own countries and regions whom we are delighted to introduce in English. At a time when information about where to go has never been easier to find, these books offer something harder to access: somebody else’s way of seeing a city. They invite readers to experience it like a local by entering it through the memories, observations, and imagination of a writer who has called it home. Literature has always allowed us to spend time inside another life. Travel with a Writer brings that literary intimacy to place. We give every writer the same invitation: write a short narrative about a place you have called home, for the would-be traveler. We choose writers whose work we admire and trust their instincts about how best to bring a place to life. What each writer makes of the invitation is entirely their own. Original writing is accompanied by curated walks, maps, infographics, and cultural recommendations, allowing readers who do travel to follow the writer’s perspective off the page and into the place itself.  Read a book before a trip, carry it through a city, return to it after coming home, or travel entirely from home. Author by author, place by place, a global literary atlas takes shape.  In 2027 and beyond, the series will continue to expand with acclaimed writers taking readers inside cities around the world, with forthcoming and developing titles including Chicago with Rebecca Makkai, Bogota with Santiago Gamboa, Berlin with Norman Ohler, Athens with Amanda Michalopoulou, Lisbon with Gonçalo Tavares, Buenos Aires with Martín Caparrós, Vancouver with Ian Williams, Hanoi with Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, and Taipei with Michelle Kuo. About THE WALKING TREE Founded in French in March 2025 as L’arbre qui marche by former journalists and editors Nadia Krovnikoff and François Saugier, The Walking Tree is an independent publishing house devoted to new ways of writing about place. Travel with a Writer has expanded internationally, with editions now available in French, Italian, and Spanish. Its U.S. and UK publishing program, The Walking Tree, is led by Kristina Kearns, former executive and editorial director of McSweeney’s and operations director of...