Coney Island: The People's Playground

This is a wonderful coffee table book about Coney Island. It is obvious that the pictures carry more weight than the prose because the author has relied on some of the showmen's embroidered falsehoods, like the one spawned by Truman Hunt about the Iggorottes (a headhunting tribe) gathering all the dogs at their Amusement Park and making a stew of them. Compare this book with The Lost Tribe of Coney Island, and you realize that research is needed to get at the truth. (Thank you, Claire Prentice!) Nonetheless, Coney Island: The People's Playground has really great photos and gives an overall sense of the evolution of Coney Island. A must-have for anyone interested in the early history of Coney Island!

This was purchased as a gift and the person liked getting it. Nice history of a cool area. I would've loved to be around in the golden days of Coney Island when it was a vacation spot.

Good memories

If you enjoy reading about the history of America, this is an absolute must as it highlights the needs for entertainment at that time. Its many incites to the whole Coney Island history is not to be missed! If you just enjoy the history of fairs in general this will keep your interest.

Bought this as a gift and it was a huge hit. This is an excellent reference book for history buffs especially if they are from Brooklyn!

If someone had to write an environmental impact statement for Coney island, the historical section would be Michael Immerso’s book. it starts at the beginning, when the island was a clamming spot for Indians, and covers main events in rather dry style.For example, one of the strangest “attractions” was pediatrician Martin Couney’s “Infant Incubator,” and it’s here, but the dramatic background to explain why premature infants were nurtured on the Coney Island boardwalk is not.While other memorials do a better job of capturing the excitement the millions felt when going to Coney, Immerso exceeds them in getting at the fascination the resort had for the intelligentsia. Jose Marti loved it, Maxim Gorki, somewhat surprisingly, hated it.Immerso somewhat overplays his theme, that the park brought democracy to entertainment for the working people. Fairs had always done that.He underplays the decorum and orderliness of the crowds. Coney, just over two miles long and about 100 yards wide, drew 46 million people in 1943, about the same number that visit Las Vegas today. There was occasional violence. Both Kid Twists were murdered at Coney Island, but there were few or no examples of the murderous mobs that, for example, occasionally rampaged through English country fairs in the 19th century.The level of policing was negligible: only about a hundred cops on days when millions crammed in.Immerso emphasizes the tension between uplifters, who wanted the working masses to be edified; and the masses and the showmen, who wanted fun. Fun won, although the Puritans never left. There was a time when topless men were sentenced to 10 days in jail.In the early days, there were whorehouses and gambling hells, but these were eliminated when Luna Park, Steeplechase Park and Dreamland became enclosed, family parks.Outside, there was a midway with freaks and frauds, but Coney never exhibited the brutality of the English fairs where, for half a crown around 1725, merrymakers could watch an Irishman eat a live chicken, feathers and all.Immerso blames Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, an uplifter if there ever was one, for putting the kibosh on Coney island, which was already in decline.I visited Coney Island in 2002, the year Immerso published his book. It was late in October, the last day of the season (which had ended in early September in the park’s best years), and I was shocked to see that the beach was closed. It was too cold for swimming but you couldn’t even walk on the sand.Not much was left. A few sad rides, Nathan’s Famous and, in a rundown building a good many steps away from the Boardwalk, the last freak show, without freaks but offering a little history lesson along with the sword-swallowing (tame compared to watching a naked woman swallow fluorescent light tubes in Manhattan the night before) and similar old tricks.Eek the Geek implored the tiny audience to help preserve the tradition of the American sideshow, but a few months later I read an interview in which Eek announced he was matriculating at a law school with a view toward defending the interests of society’s unusual individuals.And so the gaudiest, brightest, biggest show in our history slipped into darkness.

You don't have to be a New Yawker to enjoy such a tasty treat ... (almost) as tasty as a Nathan's frank! At the beginning of the 20th century, Coney Island was the undisputed center of America's emerging mass culture. Here, in the quintessential American resort, was the birthplace of the amusement park ... as well as the roller coaster and hot dog. Great crowds came to enjoy great rides and amusements, beer gardens, saloons, dance halls, grand hotels, racetracks and gambling dens. Critics dubbed Coney Island "Bedlam By the Sea," but it became a necessary outlet for the masses who were willing to loosen their spirits and wallets. This lavishly illustrated coffee table book is not merely a documentary of a fabled amusement park, but a highly readable narrative of the way Americans (especially immigrants and urbanites) came to regard their quest for --- and enjoyment of --- leisure. Pass the mustard, please!

I just recieved this book and already have read it half through. The history aspect written about Coney is done first class. The book is presented in hard back form and fabricated well. My reason for only 3 stars is the lack of more photos. I was looking for a pictorial history along with the story.This book has some pics but not like I thought it would. I have just ordered the DVD and hope that will show more of the viewed history that I am looking for.Being from Baltimore I have never been to Coney and only what I have read has always amazed me. I grew up going to Gwenn Oak amusment park, that was destoryed by Hurricain Agnes in the early 70's and sometimes a few days during the summer at Wildwood NJ, the plase I still love today over 40 years later. "Enjoy" Joe Kopeck

Was given as a present.Was pleased.Speedy service

Bought this for my wife when she got back from New York. It has the information she was looking for regarding the history of Coney Island.