Autorentext

Louis J. Parascandola is a professor of English at Long Island University in Brooklyn, NY. He is the editor of several books, including J. A. Rogers: Selected Writingsand A Coney Island Reader (with John Parascandola).

John Parascandola (1941-2024) taught at the University of Wisconsin – Madison before serving as chief of the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine and as Public Health Service Historian. His many books include Sex, Sin, and Science: A History of Syphilis in America (2008) and King of Poisons: A History of Arsenic (2012).

Klappentext

As Atlantic City grew to become one of the largest tourist destinations on the East Coast, it loomed ever larger in the imaginations of American writers. Generation upon generation of novelists, journalists, musicians, and poets visited Atlantic City and left with vivid impressions of its kaleidoscopic delights and its seedy underbelly.

This new reader collects all of these diverse perspectives on the city in one place, including accounts of Atlantic City by such famous visitors as Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Fanny Hurst, Arthur Conan Doyle, Damon Runyon, Langston Hughes, Elmore Leonard, and Bruce Springsteen. Arranged chronologically, the anthology traces the city's history from its humble beginnings as a quiet health resort to its rapid ascent to the world's playground, its gradual decline, and its hopeful if tenuous future. Together, the pieces in this collection take us inside the city's glitz, glamor, and gambling palaces, but they also don't shy away from its troubling histories of racial discrimination, political corruption, and urban decay. Compiling fiction, poetry, drama, memoirs, newspaper stories, and magazine reports, The Atlantic City Reader presents an engaging and multifaceted portrait of this iconic resort town.

Inhalt

List of Illustrations xiii
Foreword by Vicki Gold Levi xv
Selected Chronology of Atlantic City xvii
Introduction 1
Louis J. Parascandola
The Early Years: Beginnings to 1916
From Atlantic City: Its Early and Modern History 39
Carnesworthe
From "Winter Sunrise" 41
Walt Whitman
From "Our American Brighton" 43
Maurice M. Howard
From Atlantic City as a Winter Sanitarium: Its Geology, Climate, and
Isothermal Relations, and Its Sanitary Effect upon Diseases and Invalids 47
[John T. King]
From Heston's Handbook of Atlantic City 53
A. M. Heston
From "Seaside Life in America" 57
Francis H. Hardy
"On the Boardwalk (in Atlantic City)" 63
Mack Gordon and Josef Myrow
From "'They Can't Help Getting Well Here': Seaside Hospitals for
Children in the United States: 1872–1917" 65
Meghan Crnic and Cynthia Connolly

From "The Board-Walkers: Ten Days with Bertha at Atlantic City" 70
Frank Ward O'Malley
"Atlantic City: A Study in Black and White" 77
Margaret L. Brett
"The Rise and Fall of Kuehnle" 81
Literary Digest
From From Dublin to Chicago: Some Notes on a Tour in America 89
George A. Birmingham
From New Cosmopolis: A Book of Images 97
James Huneker
From Imitation of Life 101
Fanny Hurst
The "Golden" Years: 1917–1946
"The American Utopia: Atlantic City" 109
Bruce Bliven
From Our American Adventure 113
Arthur Conan Doyle
"Atlantic City Waiter" 116
Countee Cullen
"Sand" 118
John Matheus
"When Baseball Was Atlantic City's Pastime" 123
Diane Stopyra (Buzz Keough)
From Atlantic City Proof 128
Christopher Cook Gilmore
From "The Atlantic City Convention" 134
William Carlos Williams
"Dark Dolores" 137
Damon Runyon

From A Girl and Five Brave Horses 150
Sonora Webster Carver
From Of Thee I Sing: A Musical Play in Two Acts 160
George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, book; George Gershwin, music;
Ira Gershwin, lyrics
From Florence Adler Swims Forever 165
Rachel Beanland
"A Game of Monopoly in Chavannes" 169
Maxine Kumin
From The Boardwalk 172
Robert Kotlowitz
From The Skin of Our Teeth 179
Thornton Wilder
"How They Got Nucky Johnson" 186
Jack Alexander
"War at the Shore" 196
Jim Waltzer and Tom Wilk
Post–World War II Decline: 1947–1976
"Boardwalk in Season" 209
E. J. Kahn Jr.
"Seashore Through Dark Glasses (Atlantic City)" 215
Langston Hughes
From Rose 217
Martin Sherman
"Famous Rolling Chairs Beside the Sea" 222
Gay Talese
"Atlantic City Boardwalk: The Third Attraction" 226
Rochelle Ratner
"How the 1964 Democratic Convention Showed Atlantic City's Decay" 228
Steven Lemongello

From Looking for Miss America: A Pageant's 100-Year Quest to
Define Womanhood 234
Margot Mifflin
"Steel Pier 1962" 249
Sandra E. Lundy
"A Dowager's Decline" 251
Newsweek
"The Search for Marvin Gardens" 255
John McPhee
From The Hotel on St. James Place: Growing Up in Atlantic City
Between the Boardwalk and the Holocaust 267
Molly Golubcow
Gambling and Beyond? 1976 to the Present
"Atlantic City" 275
Bruce Springsteen
"Atlantic City" 277
Stephen Dunn
"Razing the Tenements in Atlantic City" 279
Barbara Helf gott Hyett
From Glitz 282
Elmore Leonard
From Under the Boardwalk 286
Bill Kent
From Indecent Proposal 291
Jack Engelhard
From "Boardwalk of Broken Dreams" 296
Priscilla Painton
From Only Begotten Daughter 306
James Morrow

From Boardwalk 313
Joseph Kertes
From Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City: A Memoir 317
Jane Wong
"Atlantic City Sunday Morning" 323
Gregory Pardlo
"Labor Day: Atlantic City" 325
Peter E. Murphy
"Boardwalk Vampire" 327
Steven Malanga
"Is Atlantic City Finally on a Roll?" 336
Ed Condran
"Planned $2.7 Billion Atlantic City Development Calls for
Thousands of Homes, Stores and Racetrack" 341
Jeff Goldman
Acknowledgments 343
Text Credits 345
Index 351