This richly documented and illustrated tale takes readers on a journey along the edges of the country to 12 of its most famous beach towns to reveal the vitality of the American boardwalk as an idea, rather than just a place.

Welcome to the scenic New Jersey coast, a place where the sand moves under your feet, the sound of the waves touches your heart, and the smell of fresh seafood fills the air. The shores of New Jersey are not just a destination, but a lifestyle shaped by decades of tradition and the joy of the sea. In this book, we invite you to explore the fascinating world of the Jersey Shore, from the lively promenades to the tranquil islands and historic sites that tell stories of times long past. The New Jersey coast is a source of inspiration, enjoyment and relaxation. Join us on a varied journey along the coastal towns, where glamour and simplicity, past and future intertwine. We will explore the art and culture, wildlife and culinary scene on the coast to understand the essence of this special place. New Jersey is not only a state with beautiful beaches, but also a place of challenges and opportunities. In this book, we take a look at the future of the Jersey Shore and efforts to protect these natural treasures. The shores of New Jersey are a place of joy and wonder, and we can't wait to take you on this journey. Immerse yourself in the beauty and allure of the Jersey Shore, and let yourself be enchanted by its uniqueness as we explore the coastline in all its facets.

Some cities have long-treasured waterfront promenades, many cities have recently built ones, and others have plans to create them as opportunities arise. Beyond connecting people with urban water bodies, waterfront promenades offer many social and ecological benefits. They are places for social gathering, for physical activity, for relief from the stresses of urban life, and where the unique transition from water to land eco-systems can be nurtured and celebrated. The best are inclusive places, welcoming and accessible to diverse users. This book explores urban waterfront promenades worldwide. It presents 38 promenade case studies—as varied as Vancouver’s extensive network that has been built over the last century, the classic promenades in Rio de Janeiro, the promenades in Stockholm’s recently built Hammarby Sjöstad eco-district, and the Ma On Shan promenade in the Hong Kong New Territories—analyzing their physical form, social use, the circumstances under which they were built, the public policies that brought them into being, and the threats from sea level rise and the responses that have been made. Based on wide research, Urban Waterfront Promenades examines the possibilities for these public spaces and offers design and planning approaches useful for professionals, community decision-makers, and scholars. Extensive plans, cross sections, and photographs permit visual comparison.

This book illustrates the social change that took place in the lives of women during the Progressive Era. The political and social change of the Progressive Era brought conflicts over labor, women's rights, consumerism, religion, sexuality, and many other aspects of American life. As Americans argued and fought over suffrage and political reform, vast changes were also taking place in women's professional, material, personal, recreational, and intellectual lives. In this installment of Greenwood's Daily Life through History series, award-winning author Kirstin Olsen brings to life the everyday experiences, priorities, and challenges of women in America's Progressive Era (ca. 1890–1920). From the barnstorming "bloomer girls" who showed America that women could play baseball to film star, tycoon, and co-founder of the Academy of Motion Pictures Mary Pickford, and from the highly skilled "Hello Girls"—telephone operators who helped win World War I—to the remarkable journalist and civil rights activist Ida Wells-Barnett, women led both famous and ordinary lives that were shaped by and helped to drive the dramatic social change taking place during the Progressive Era. All of this and more is described in this book through topical sections as well as stories and profiles that reveal to readers the daily lives of America's women who lived during the Progressive Era. Readers will benefit from Olsen's characteristically sharp eye for detail, power of description, and breadth of historical knowledge.

Not a cookbook, but a encyclopedia collection of entries on all things sweet. The articles explore the ways in which our taste for sweetness have shaped-- and been shaped by-- history. In addition, you'll discover the origins of mud pie; who the Sara Lee company was named after; why Walker Smith, Jr. is better known as "Sugar Ray Robinson"; and how lyricists have immortalized sweets from "Blueberry Hill" to "Tutti Fruiti".

Experience the electrifying, never-before-told true story of amusement parks, from the middle ages to present day, and meet the colorful (and sometimes criminal) characters who are responsible for their enchanting charms. Step right up! The Amusement Park is a rich, anecdotal history that begins nine centuries ago with the "pleasure gardens" of Europe and England and ends with the most elaborate modern parks in the world. It's a history told largely through the stories of the colorful, sometimes hedonistic characters who built them, including: Showmen like Joseph and Nicholas Schenck and Marcus Loew Railroad barons Andrew Mellon and Henry E. Huntington The men who ultimately destroyed the parks, including Robert Moses and Fred Trump Gifted artisans and craft-people who brought the parks to life An amazing cast of supporting players, from Al Capone to Annie Oakley And, of course, this is a full-throttle celebration of the rides, those marvels of engineering and heart-stopping thrills from an author, Stephen Silverman, whose life-long passion for his subject shines through. The parks and fairs featured include the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, Coney Island, Steeplechase Park, Dreamland, Euclid Beach Park, Cedar Point, Palisades Park, Ferrari World, Dollywood, Sea World, Six Flags Great Adventure, Universal Studios, Disney World and Disneyland, and many more.

During the first half of the twentieth century, Atlantic City was the nation's most popular middle-class resort--the home of the famed Boardwalk, the Miss America Pageant, and the board game Monopoly. By the late 1960s, it had become a symbol of urban decay and blight, compared by journalists to bombed-out Dresden and war-torn Beirut. Several decades and a dozen casinos later, Atlantic City is again one of America's most popular tourist spots, with thirty-five million visitors a year. Yet most stay for a mere six hours, and the highway has replaced the Boardwalk as the city's most important thoroughfare. Today the city doesn't have a single movie theater and its one supermarket is a virtual fortress protected by metal detectors and security guards. In this wide-ranging book, Bryant Simon does far more than tell a nostalgic tale of Atlantic City's rise, near death, and reincarnation. He turns the depiction of middle-class vacationers into a revealing discussion of the boundaries of public space in urban America. In the past, he argues, the public was never really about democracy, but about exclusion. During Atlantic City's heyday, African Americans were kept off the Boardwalk and away from the beaches. The overly boisterous or improperly dressed were kept out of theaters and hotel lobbies by uniformed ushers and police. The creation of Atlantic City as the "Nation's Playground" was dependent on keeping undesirables out of view unless they were pushing tourists down the Boardwalk on rickshaw-like rolling chairs or shimmying in smoky nightclubs. Desegregation overturned this racial balance in the mid-1960s, making the city's public spaces more open and democratic, too open and democratic for many middle-class Americans, who fled to suburbs and suburban-style resorts like Disneyworld. With the opening of the first casino in 1978, the urban balance once again shifted, creating twelve separate, heavily guarded, glittering casinos worlds walled off from the dilapidated houses, boarded-up businesses, and lots razed for redevelopment that never came. Tourists are deliberately kept away from the city's grim reality and its predominantly poor African American residents. Despite ten of thousands of buses and cars rolling into every day, gambling has not saved Atlantic City or returned it to its glory days. Simon's moving narrative of Atlantic City's past points to the troubling fate of urban America and the nation's cultural trajectory in the twentieth century, with broad implications for those interested in urban studies, sociology, planning, architecture, and history.

Exploring the significance of places that built our cultural past, this guide is a lens into historical sites spanning the entire history of the United States, from Acoma Pueblo to Ground Zero. Historic Sites and Landmarks That Shaped America: From Acoma Pueblo to Ground Zero encompasses more than 200 sites from the earliest settlements to the present, covering a wide variety of locations. It includes concise yet detailed entries on each landmark that explain its importance to the nation. With entries arranged alphabetically according to the name of the site and the state in which it resides, this work covers both obscure and famous landmarks to demonstrate how a nation can grow and change with the creation or discovery of important places. The volume explores the ways different cultures viewed, revered, or even vilified these sites. It also examines why people remember such places more than others. Accessible to both novice and expert readers, this well-researched guide will appeal to anyone from high school students to general adult readers.

Asbury Parks Early History James A. Bradley James A. Bradley was born on Valentines Day, 1830, at the Old Blazing Star Inn in Rossville on Staten Island in New York. He was the son of Adam and Hannah Bradley. He was baptized a Catholic. When he was only five, his father died from alcohol related problems. Two years later, his mother married Charles Smith and moved to Cherry Street in the Bowery. In those years before the Civil War, the citys population was exploding. The lower east side was the first stop for tens of thousands of immigrants to America. The original buildings had no heat, light, or running water and few windows until the late 1960s when the state enacted laws that forced landlords to improve living conditions. On hot nights, you could see tenants sleeping on fire escapes to get relief from summer heat. In 1837, the year they moved, a general economic panic had taken over the city. In that year over 100 firms went under, railroads fell, banks collapsed and building construction stopped. The citys working class crowded into tiny tenement apartments. The poor sewer system and primitive health services led to massive outbreaks of typhus and cholera. Bradleys stepfather set up a notions store selling groceries, meat, clothing, shoes and other items. Bradley was only seven years old at the time. He and his stepfather had a peddlers wagon, their favorite spot was down on Catherine Street outside the new specialty store, Lord & Taylor. Bradley obtained his early education in the New York public school system, and in later life continued his education through self-directed reading. At twelve, Bradley worked as a laborer at William Daviss Paper Mill in Bloomfield, New Jersey. As a teenager, Bradley hung with a rowdy immigrant crowd. He soon developed a fondness for wine. By the early 1840s the Bowery became more of a pleasure zone. Small hotels offered free vaudevilles to attract customers including ventriloquism, dancing, circus acts and comics. Young Bradley loved the shows, he tried to attend at least three a week. At thirteen, he witnesses the development of one of the most popular styles of the day; the minstrel show. They played reels, jigs and told down-home plantation jokes. Negros were barred from Bowery theaters, but minstrel shows became the rage. Bradleys mother decided that her teenage son was learning too much too last. She sent him to Bloomfield, New Jersey where a friend from her childhood owned a farm. He spent a year in Jersey milking cows and feeding chickens. He disliked it intensely. Twice he ran away and was caught trying to catch a ferry back to the city. Finally, at age sixteen, he returned to the lower East Side. Upon returning, he apprenticed as a brushmaker in Francis R. Furnolds factory in New York City. He was made foreman at age twenty-one and remained for seven years. It was hard work in a cramped space that stunk of hog bristle and glue. The animal hair had to be washed by hand, dried in a hot room, bleached, sorted for length, shaped, tied, glued and inserted into a handle. Depending on the type of brush, a man might make six to eight dozen a day. The hours were long and when work was over, Bradley had to return to his crowded, narrow tenement apartment. During this period, Bradley married Helen M. Packard, daughter of Lewis Packard from Boston. Helen was an educated Rutgers student and a staunch Methodist. The two of them resolved to start their own business and through self-discipline, managed to save one thousand dollars. In 1857, they completed payment on a lot uptown. Then, borrowing the capital, the twenty seven year old Bradley launched his own brush company, Bradley and Smith, located in Pearl Street in New York City. It became a very successful enterprise. Bradley was a vigorous, large built man, rough in appearance, but full of energy. While his wife kept shop, he was upstairs cutting, shaping and gluing brushes. Later in life, Bradl

This innovative and timely volume of essays critically interrogates the shared histories between sport and a variety of leisure, entertainment and cultural pursuits. Sport’s Relationship with Other Leisure Industries: Historical Perspectives spans the bowling greens of early modern England to the postmodern exhibition halls of contemporary Las Vegas, and considers examples from Europe, North America and India. Utilizing a range of historical methods and sources, they describe how sport has interacted with a broad range of leisure forms, including tourism, shopping, theatre, circus, carnival and film. The collection takes into account the economic, cultural, geographic and political interactions sport has forged and poses a series of questions: about how sport has been forged in contemporary consumer capitalism; about the manner in which it has been shaped by space and place; and the ways in which entrepreneurs, sportspeople and artists have represented sporting competition. The collection will help both students and scholars conceptualise sporting networks, and will be of interest to those working in multiple fields. This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in History.