An Atlantic City Reader: The Rise and Decline of an American Resort
An Atlantic City Reader provides a representative sampling of the best of the many disparate interpretations of the iconic resort by famous authors (Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Damon Runyon, Langston Hughes, and Elmore Leonard) as well as lesser known but insightful observers, including Frank Ward O’Malley and John Matheus. The Reader offers a composite of fiction, poetry, drama, nonfiction prose, and newspaper and magazine reports, presenting a context to understand better the complex nature of Atlantic City. Divided into four chronological periods, the anthology traces the city’s history from its humble beginnings as a quiet resort destination to its rapid ascent as the "world’s playground," its gradual decline, and its hopeful, albeit tenuous, future. While chronicling its storied past, the book also shows the parallel nature of its endemic political corruption and racism that have always been embedded in the city. 
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An Atlantic City Reader: The Rise and Decline of an American Resort
An Atlantic City Reader provides a representative sampling of the best of the many disparate interpretations of the iconic resort by famous authors (Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Damon Runyon, Langston Hughes, and Elmore Leonard) as well as lesser known but insightful observers, including Frank Ward O’Malley and John Matheus. The Reader offers a composite of fiction, poetry, drama, nonfiction prose, and newspaper and magazine reports, presenting a context to understand better the complex nature of Atlantic City. Divided into four chronological periods, the anthology traces the city’s history from its humble beginnings as a quiet resort destination to its rapid ascent as the "world’s playground," its gradual decline, and its hopeful, albeit tenuous, future. While chronicling its storied past, the book also shows the parallel nature of its endemic political corruption and racism that have always been embedded in the city. 
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An Atlantic City Reader: The Rise and Decline of an American Resort

An Atlantic City Reader: The Rise and Decline of an American Resort

An Atlantic City Reader: The Rise and Decline of an American Resort
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An Atlantic City Reader: The Rise and Decline of an American Resort

An Atlantic City Reader: The Rise and Decline of an American Resort

Overview

An Atlantic City Reader provides a representative sampling of the best of the many disparate interpretations of the iconic resort by famous authors (Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Damon Runyon, Langston Hughes, and Elmore Leonard) as well as lesser known but insightful observers, including Frank Ward O’Malley and John Matheus. The Reader offers a composite of fiction, poetry, drama, nonfiction prose, and newspaper and magazine reports, presenting a context to understand better the complex nature of Atlantic City. Divided into four chronological periods, the anthology traces the city’s history from its humble beginnings as a quiet resort destination to its rapid ascent as the "world’s playground," its gradual decline, and its hopeful, albeit tenuous, future. While chronicling its storied past, the book also shows the parallel nature of its endemic political corruption and racism that have always been embedded in the city. 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781978842465
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Publication date: 05/12/2026
Pages: 242
Product dimensions: 7.00(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)
Age Range: 16 - 18 Years

About the Author

LOUIS J. PARASCANDOLA is a professor of English at Long Island University in Brooklyn, NY. He is the author of several books including J.A. Rogers: Voice of the Harlem Renaissance and Beyond: Selected Writings (University of Tennessee Press) and A Coney Island Reader (with John Parascandola) (Columbia University Press).

JOHN PARASCANDOLA (1941-2024) was a professor of the history of pharmacy and history of science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Chief, History of Medicine Division at the National Library of Medicine in Washington DC. He is the author of numerous books, including Studies in the History of Modern Pharmacology and Drug Therapy (Ashgate, Farnham, UK) and King of Poisons: A History of Arsenic (Potomac Books).

Table of Contents

Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Atlantic City Timeline
Introduction
The Early Years: Beginnings to 1916
Carnesworthe (pseud. for Alexander Barrington Irvine), from Atlantic City: Its Early andModern History, W.W. Harris and Co., 1868
Walt Whitman, from “Winter Sunrise,” Times (Philadelphia), January 26, 1879
Maurice M. Howard, from “Our American Brighton,” Potter’s American Monthly, November 1880
[John T. King], from Atlantic City as a Winter Sanitarium. Its Geology, Climate, and Isothermal Relations, and Its Sanitary Effect upon Diseases and Invalids, B. H. James & Co, 1881
A. M. Heston, from Heston’s Handbook of Atlantic City, Tenth Edition, Franklin Printing Company, 1895
Francis H. Hardy, from “Seaside Life in America,” Cornhill Magazine, November 1896
Mack Gordon and Josef Myrow, “On the Boardwalk (In Atlantic City)” from film Three Little Girls in Blue, 1946 (set 1902)
Meghan Crnic and Cynthia Connolly, from “’They Can’t Help Getting Well Here’: Seaside Hospitals for Children in the United States: 1872-1917,” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Volume 2, Number 2, 2009
Frank Ward O’Malley, from “The Board-Walkers: Ten Days with Bertha at Atlantic City” Everybody’s Magazine, August 1908
Margaret L. Brett, "Atlantic City: A Study in Black and White” Survey, September 7, 1912
“The Rise and Fall of Kuehnle” Literary Digest, December 27, 1913
George A. Birmingham, from From Dublin to Chicago: Some Notes on a Tour in America, George H. Doran, 1914
James Huneker, from The New Cosmopolis: A Book of Images, Scribner, 1915
Fanny Hurst, from Imitation of Life, Harper & Brothers, 1933 (set 1910s)
The “Golden” Years: 1917-1946
Bruce Bliven, “The American Utopia: Atlantic City” New Republic, December 29, 1920
Arthur Conan Doyle, from Our American Adventure, George H. Doran Co., 1923 
Countee Cullen, “Atlantic City Waiter” Color (Harper & Collins), 1925
John Matheus, “Sand” Opportunity, July 1926
Diane Stopyra (Buzz Keough), “When Baseball Was Atlantic City’s Pastime” Press of Atlantic City, May 17, 2019
Christopher Cook Gilmore, from Atlantic City Proof, Simon and Schuster, 1978 (set in 1928)
William Carlos Williams, “The Atlantic City Convention,” from Collected Poems Vol. 1: 1909-1939, New Directions, 1991
Damon Runyon, “Dark Dolores,” Hearst’s International Combined with Cosmopolitan, December 1929
Sonora Webster Carver, from A Girl and Five Brave Horses as told to Elizabeth Land Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961 (set in 1931)
George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, book; music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, from Of Thee I Sing: A Musical Play in Two Acts, Samuel French, 1932
Rachel Beanland, from Florence Adler Swims Forever, Simon & Schuster, 2020 (set 1934)
Maxine Kumin, “A Game of Monopoly in Chavannes,” from Nurture, Viking Penguin, 1989 (set in the mid-1930s)
Robert Kotlowitz, from The Boardwalk, Alfred A. Knopf, 1977 (set 1939)
Thornton Wilder, from TheSkin of Our Teeth, Harper & Brothers, 1942
Jack Alexander, “How They Got Nucky Johnson,” Reader’s Digest, May 1942
Jim Waltzer and Tom Wilk, “War at the Shore,” from Tales of South Jersey: Profiles and Personalities, Rutgers University Press, 2001 (set between 1942-1946)
Post World War Two Decline: 1947-1976
E. J. Kahn Jr., “Boardwalk in Season,” New Yorker, April 19, 1947
Langston Hughes “Seashore Through Dark Glasses (Atlantic City)”, Poetry: A Magazine of Versey, February 1947
Martin Sherman, from Rose, Methuen, 1999 (set early 1950s)
Gay Talese, “Famous Rolling Chairs Beside the Sea,” New York Times, February 21, 1954
Rochelle Ratner, “Atlantic City Boardwalk: The Third Attraction,” Gull Books, 1980 (set early 1980s)
Steven Lemongello, “How the 1964 Democratic Convention Showed Atlantic City’s Decay,” Press of Atlantic City, August 2014
Margot Mifflin, from Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood, Counterpoint, 2020 (set 1968)
Sandra E. Lundy, “Steel Pier 1962,” Down the Shore Publishing, 1996
“A Dowager’s Decline,” Newsweek, June 8, 1970
John McPhee, “The Search for Marvin Gardens,” New Yorker, September 9, 1972 
Molly Golubcow, from The Hotel on St. James Place: Growing Up in Atlantic City between the Boardwalk and the Holocaust, Bartleby Press, 2021 (set in 1970s)
Gambling and Beyond?: 1976 to the Present
Bruce Springsteen, “Atlantic City,” from his album Nebraska, 1982
Stephen Dunn, “Atlantic City,” from Not Dancing, Carnegie Mellon, 1984
Barbara Helfgott Hyett, “Razing the Tenements in Atlantic City,” Natural Law, Northland Press of Winona, 1989 (set 1984)
Elmore Leonard, from Glitz, Arbor House, 1985
Bill Kent, from Under the Boardwalk, Arbor House, 1988
Jack Engelhard, from Indecent Proposal, Donald I. Fine Inc., 1988
Priscilla Painton, from “Boardwalk of Broken Dreams,” Time, September 25, 1989
James Morrow, from Only Begotten Daughter, William Morrow and Company, 1990 
Joseph Kertes, from Boardwalk, ECW Press, 1998
Jane Wong, from Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City: A Memoir, Tin House, 2023 (set in 1990s)
Gregory Pardlo, “Atlantic City Sunday Morning,” from Totem, Coper Canyon Press, 2007
Peter E. Murphy, “Labor Day: Atlantic City,” Rattle, September 7, 2014
Steven Malanga, “Boardwalk Vampire,” City Journal, Autumn 2015
Ed Condran “Is Atlantic City Finally on a Roll?,” New Jersey Monthly, August 5, 2022
Jeff Goldman, “Planned $2.7 Billion Atlantic City Development Calls for Thousands of Homes, Stores and Racetrack,” March 25, 2023
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
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