| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America. By Bryant Simon. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. xiv, 285 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-19-516753-8.)

To pose Atlantic City as a case study of urban decline in the United States may appear ambitious for a noted but small seaside resort. A larger or more industrial city such as Detroit or Trenton would seem more typical and appropriate. But, as Bryant Simon observes, the changes in commerce and technology that undermined the cities of the rust belt were also at work in Atlantic City. Here these forces took the form of cheap air travel, Disneyland, and even air conditioning and backyard pools, all of which created alternatives to a city that by 1960 had lost its appeal to middle- and working-class whites. A more basic common thread lies at the heart of the author's thesis: the "middle class notions of space, race, and democracy" (pp. 11–12) that sustained Atlantic City's boom times also fueled its sharp decline and molded its awkward comeback in the casino era.

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