In Nevada's nineteenth-century towns and mining camps, the demand for entertainment was almost entirely filled by traveling theatrical troupes. Thinly settled and distant from major population centers, the state took well over a century to develop the sort of sophisticated stage culture necessary to incubate its own professional playwrights and theater companies. During this period, few theatrical backers would risk a production by any American playwright, let alone an unknown local one, when audiences were likely to prefer a more fashionable foreign play.

"Welcome Mob Bosses" read a Reno casino marquee for an entire day in 1997 and oddly enough, no one seemed to notice this proclamation that would never occur in real life—it was a gag for the spoof Mafia! filming in town that week. Movies, television, and history have forever linked Nevada and the mob in the public mind, so that audiences easily accept any plot element involving casinos run by organized crime.

Movies will tell you that much of what women do in Nevada involves work and marriage, but with the state's unique twist. When it comes to jobs, entertainment is a big field for women, with more singing and dancing opportunities than found in most states. Nevada is also the only state where women can work legally as prostitutes. And while marriage is common throughout the rest of the country, Nevada offers a strong lure with themed wedding chapels, originally flourishing because of less stringent license requirements.

Nevada travel literature offers an outsider's perspective of the state's geography, environment, and culture. It is the reportage and impressions of travelers whose journeys of choice or necessity have led them to the Great Basin and Nevada. The literature ranges from explorer and emigrant diaries to the avant-garde. As visitors, the writers attempt to express the "otherness" of the place, and often the central character or metaphor is the land.