Film critic David Thomson is coming to UNLV on Oct. 15 to promote his latest collection of criticism. In addition to his film stuff, he is also the author of In Nevada: The Land, the People, God and Chance, a book I’m reading as we speak (well … maybe not right this second). It’s not a conventional history of Nevada, more like an extended meditation on the state, with an emphasis on its loneliest and most abused quarters.

It gets pretty heavy into the social significance of atomic testing. But the book has its moments, like this one:

The government has always regarded Nevada as a place unlike others, fit for tests, experiments, and ventures it would sometimes rather not talk about.

And:

Nevada is on the edge, on the wire, off to one side, in the empty quarter, or even in the rest of the country’s head as an idea, a possibility, an alternative. It is an experiment, or a kind of theater…. for America has used Nevada as a testing ground, and not just for weapons and their destructiveness but also for new social ideas, and their explosiveness. What happens if you allow divorce, prostitution, gambling? Can there be community and purpose if you encourage things deep in human nature yet supposedly alien to order and togetherness? Don’t we need to find out?

He published the book in 1999. Maybe now, almost a decade later, he’s ready to answer some of those questions.