The life of Peter C. Petersen constitutes an American and Nevada success story. Born in Denmark, circa 1898, he immigrated to the United States in 1915 and arrived in Nevada in 1919. Petersen has had a full career working as a baker (his original trade), being active in union affairs, and serving as president of the State Federation of Labor, deputy collector in the Internal Revenue office, on the Nevada Industrial Commission, head of the Reno Post Office, and member of the Nevada Gaming Commission. From the 1930s to the 1950s he was a close political ally of Senator Patrick A. McCarran.

Petersen was an immigrant who understood the problems of other immigrants. One gains the impression that immigration was one area in which he had his disagreements with McCarran, though his criticism of the senator on this point is muted. Although his own path as an immigrant was not unduly harsh, he is sympathetic with the problems of the newly arrived. In the post office he had considerable contact with registering aliens, encouraging them to become citizens, subsequently helping to build up the McCarran political organization.

Peter Petersen gives a valuable glimpse of the handicaps under which labor worked in the 1930s. He was president of the State Federation of Labor during part of that difficult decade, and he describes well the hard times which unions experienced. His description of how labor helped elect, and keep in office, Senator McCarran will also be of value to future scholars.

Petersen claims to have been one of the few who could really get along with McCarran. He gives valuable information on the relationship between McCarran and Pittman, why McCarran did not support William S. Boyle for United States District Attorney, how McCarran had achieved preeminence in the Nevada Democratic Party by 1940, and why the hotel owners in Las Vegas boycotted the Las Vegas Sun. Many of McCarran's attitudes were shared by Petersen, and he was not unproud of being called the senator's "hatchet man." Thus, Petersen writes off both Thomas Mechling and Hank Greenspun as opportunistic carpetbaggers to the state.

Since Petersen was head of the Reno Post Office for some twenty years (he received the job as a political plum from McCarran), he provides information as to the complications of running the agency in a period of unprecedented community growth, and through war and rising deficit. He candidly discusses the sagging morale of postal workers, as their wages steadily fell behind the rising cost of living.