Edward A. Olsen, a native of New York, was born in 1919. He spent nearly his whole life in the West, as a youngster in Colorado, and as a newspaperman in Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada.

Mr. Olsen was handicapped since birth by a serious physical condition. He conquered his handicap sufficiently to undertake two demanding careers—that of a wire service journalist and that of chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

Through the late 1940s and 1950s, Olsen was one of the most alert and effective journalists in Nevada. Few men knew Nevada better than he and none had a better sentinel post from which to watch the parade of celebrities who came and went through Nevada for their various political, matrimonial, social, and antisocial purposes. He was a careful and analytical reporter. In the early 1960s, when he was based as the state government's leading official in the field of gambling regulation, he had another unusual station from which to survey the carnival world of the Nevada casino industry.

In this oral history, Mr. Olsen gets to the bottom of things quickly and nearly always finds something to laugh at there. He is not motivated by any commercial considerations in offering the information. In general he is objective, and where he is not, he reveals his biases openly.