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.
“Many authors have written of Atlantic City with nostalgia for bygone vacations or with criticism of the gambling industry and political corruption, but until now, no one has attempted to capture the multiplicity of viewpoints and commentary on the city across time in one volume. An Atlantic City Reader provides history, entertainment, and social commentary on ‘America’s Famous Playground’ through a variety of lenses and voices.”
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 Connoll y
From “The Board-Walkers: Ten Days with Bertha at Atlantic City” 70 Frank Ward O’Mall ey “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 Cull en “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 Will iam Carlos Will iams “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 Al exander “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 Rochell e Ratner “How the 1964 Democratic Convention Showed Atlantic City’s Decay” 228 Steven Lemongell o
From Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood 234 Margot Miffl in “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 Moll y Golubcow Gambling and Beyond? 1976 to the Present “Atlantic City” 275 Bruce Sp ringsteen “Atlantic City” 277 Stephen Dunn “Razing the Tenements in Atlantic City” 279 Barbara Helf gott Hyett From Glitz 282 El more Leonard From Under the Boardwalk 286 Bill Kent From Indecent Proposal 291 Jack Engelhard From “Boardwalk of Broken Dreams” 296 Priscill a 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
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).
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