INSIDE THE GLITTER is a deeply moving chronicle of the working class that keeps the gambling metropolis of Nevada on its feet. Through individual portraits and profiles, Kit Miller unlocks and opens the doors on secret rooms illuminating the private, dignified lives behind the service industry. This book burns away the shimmering surface of Las Vegas and for the first time, we are given a glimpse of what is real. It is upon the backs of these people that the world plays its games. Kit Miller’s photographs create both a compassionate and searing social critique as well as images of fine art that belong next to the work of Inge Morath, James Agee, and Carole Gallagher.

—Terry Tempest Williams

Kit Miller takes us behind the glitter and the glamour, revealing the lives of the people who make casinos work. Gamblers dream of hitting it big. Kit Miller’s subjects have more mundane dreams: a decent paycheck; an education; clothes for the kids; a few hours alone in the desert. Casinos peddle fantasy. Miller shatters the glitz with the reality of lives that are sometimes rich, sometimes troubled, and always more human than anything a craps pit conveys.

—Howard Berkes, National Public Radio

At the beginning of INSIDE THE GLITTER, Kit Miller quotes Mark Twain: “There is no such thing as an uninteresting life.” She proves this with her portraits of the real people who keep Nevada casinos running each day and night. Her photos capture waitresses and maids and dealers in moments of vulnerability and strength. Her text is smart and warm and true. Her interviews with 40 casino workers hold us as readers because she strikes to the heart of each story, repeatedly opening with lines of startling irony and images that demand our attention.

After spending time with the people she brings alive in this book, you will never again walk into a casino without looking the doorman in the eye and greeting him. You will notice the maintenance workers—invisible before—and wonder about their lives. Your tips to the waitresses are likely to increase. In this new territory, Kit Miller cuts through thoughtless stereotypes of class and race to remind us of what we all share.

—Stephen Trimble, Photographer and author of The Sagebrush Ocean: A Natural History of the Great Basin

Kit Miller is attuned to the people from all walks of life who make our casinos happen, and it shows in the excellent photographs and stories. It’s great to have Nevadans writing about Nevadans.

—Linda Dufurrena, Photographer and author

Kit Miller has put together a splendid book. In a culture where the arcane and the risky, the sensational and the bizarre, claim the attention of so many writers, Kit Miller stays close to reality, close to life; and, as a result, Inside the Glitter is clear, devoted, strong, acute and beautiful.

—Steven Nightingale, author of The Lost Coast

Inside the Glitter: Lives of Casino Workers
100 pages, 86 photographs
$24.95 plus $5 shipping

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