Overview

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.

Full Product Details

9781978842472

Table of Contents

Reviews

""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."" --Heather Perez ""Stockton University and Atlantic City historian""

Author Information

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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