4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land |  | Author: Daniel Wolff
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 870938
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Paperback
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8
Dewey Decimal Number: 974
ASIN: B000VYSU52
Publication Date: June 27, 2006
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Product Description
The story of the boardwalk town Bruce Springsteen made famous-and a quintessential portrait of small-town American democracy.
When Bruce Springsteen called his first album Greetings from Asbury Park, he introduced a generation of fans to a fallen seaside resort town that came to represent working-class American life. But behind this archetypal small-town landscape lies a complicated past.
Starting with the town's founding as a religious promised land, music journalist and poet Daniel Wolff plots a course through 130 years of entwined social and musical history, touching on John Philip Sousa, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, and Frankie Lymon on the way to the town Bruce was born to run from. Out of the details of local history-the boardwalk in the Gilded Age; the celebrities who passed through, from Stephen Crane to Martin Luther King; sensational murder trials; the birth of Mob control; and a devastating mid-century "race riot"-emerges a universal story of one small town's fortunes. Told with grace and full of fascinating detail, Daniel Wolff's tour across thirteen decades of the Fourth of July in Asbury Park captures all the allure and heartbreak of the American dream reduced to blight and decay, with gentrification as the one hope for a return to its glory days.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Fabulous August 22, 2008
Laura Farrell (New Jersey, USA)
I couldn't put this book down. Wolff goes into great detail about this town, yet it's never boring. I also loved the way he tied in the thoughts of Stephen Crane and Bruce Springsteen to the political and social happenings of the town. While he uses the insights of these writers to great advantage, he also makes marvelous insights of his own. If you are interested in Asbury Park, or American social history in general, this is a must-read.
 OFFENSIVE ,POLITICALLY CORRECT TRASH May 6, 2007
Charles H. Levenson (new jersey)
2 out of 13 found this review helpful
I am offended by this book.
It is politically correct,which in itself is a turn-off,but the author,Daniel Wolff,seems neither to understand the history of Asbury Park,nor appreciate the fact that that history CANNOT be viewed through a politically correct microscope.
To begin with Asbury Park,as well as nearby Ocean Grove were begun as strictly conservative religious communities...Wolff either does not understand the importance of this fact,or is himself offended by its implications.Furthermore,both communities were begun not as public,but as PRIVATE communities.Absbury park,unlike Ocean Grove,was not wholly owned by the Methodist church but was,instead,owned and operated by one man,james Bradey,himself a strict Methodist ...
To understand Asbury Park and not understand that THINGS WERE VERY VERY DIFFERENT IN THE 19th century is to not understand anything at all...Wolff seems intent upon grafting 21st century values and thinking upon a 19th century canvas,something that just does not work..
Take,for example,the problems caused by the black population of that time,who neither owned any property in Asbury Park,nor even lived within that communities borders..These people were,for the most part,employed as "menials",i.e.porters,cooks,maids and suchlike...It was a time when the sort of equality that is commonplace today was NOT commonplace..And Asbury Park,like any other BUSINESS VENTURE,depended upon a monied customer base in order to both thrive and expand...and in the 19th century that monied customer base,like it or not,was white,AND not a little bit bigoted against blacks..Sure,by today's standards such behaviour would not be tolerated,but it is apparent that Wolff does not understand that 1880 is not 2007,and that what today would not be tolerated in 1880,1890,1900,ect was both tolerated and commonplace.So instead of understanding this fact,and writing about Asbury Park AS IT WAS,Wolff instead makes his focus the fact that blacks,who were employed at various businesses in Asbury Park were nonetheless not wanted as paying customers whose presence tended to deter the monied white from coming there..
Wolff celebrates defiance..Instead of appreciating that the 19th century,for the most part was a far different,more conservative place that almost anywhere is today,he istead tends to deride the values that were prevailing and glorify the critics..One of these was author Stephen Crane,famous for the novel"The Red Badge of Courage"but,at that time,a relentless critic of everything Brady's Asbury Park represented..Most people who came to Asbury Park at that time had little problem with theprevailing atmosphere of conservative,religiously oriented standards(otherwise how could either Asbury Park of nearby Ocean Grove thrive,as they most certainly did?)but Wolff chooses to ignore this fact and instead zero in on the rebels,like Crane,who apparently felt that it was his job to spit on the status Quo..
Throughout the book Wolff makes the saga of Asbury Park one great big "civil rights"saga..Which,of course,it was not...Further,Wolff fails to understand why Asbury Park became the washed up slum that,until only recently,it was..Like it or not,the monied interests,both in terms of capital and the tourist trade,were largely dominated by whites who deserted Asbury Park when other more"exclusive"getaways presented themselves(in the more modern era of automobile and airplane travel),leaving the town largely to its black population,under which like every other big city in New Jersey,quickly degenerated into a slum...
Does this sound a tad bigoted?Maybe,but bigoted or not the fact remains that when whites fled the inner-cities and the old shore resort towns,the new black majorities there no longer attracted tourists or industry..
Wolff fails to understand that tourists WITH MONEY do not have to go to places like Asbury Park...They do not have to mingle,on an equal basis,with those whom they employ to cut thier hair or shine thier shoes..Sure,in a"perfect"world everyone would not only be"equal"but accepting and considerate towards everyone else,but unless you have been living with your eyes and ears closed,ours has never been a perfect world,not today,and certainly not in the 19th century,which was Asbury Park's heyday...So Wolff,failing to understand reality,instead paints his word-picture of Asbury Park in strokes that have little in common with reality..
Another one of Wolff's heroic figures is Bruce Springsteen..Wolff celebrates Springsteen's lyrics about the working man,and all of the rest of his contrived twaddle,as if the songs that have made it possible for Springsteen to enjoy a lifestyle far removed from just about anyone he ever encountered in Asbury Park somehow has meaning with regard to the city itself..Surely if Springsteen's lyrics did have any real relevance to the real Asbury Park,then Springsteen himself would still be living there..Instead he lives(at least part of the time)in Rumson,new jersey,the sort of rich beach community,populated mainly by rich whites like himself,that,in his book,Wolff so denigrates...
This book is trash..It has no idea what reality represents,either way back when,in the 19th century,or now,in the politically correct 21st century..Springsteen,wolff's anti-hero from Asbury Park,may sing about the disenfranchised,but like the white people of that long ago Asbury Park,he doesn't live among them..
How not to run a city April 14, 2007
Jersey Kid (Katy, Texas, America!)
Not a Bruce Springsteen bio or critique and not advertised as one, 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land by Daniel Wolff fits its eponymus title exactly.
Please excuse any hubris - it is not intended - but you will enjoy this book a lot more if you have an aquaintance and familiarity with Asbury (the only name by which it was referred). And, while my title aptly describes what this book addressses, I have to admit to being stunned by the history author Wolff presents.
Key to that is the knowledge that Asbury Park did not develop as city through what I'll call natural means. There was no influx of population that arrived and, other time, established roots and the attendant need for a municipal structure to meet public needs. Instead, it was the creation of a individual who in this day and age would be called a fundamentalist Christian but was profit-minded enough that he wanted to work on Sundays.
The creation was named Asbury Park after noted Methodist Francis Asbury and its mission, if you will, was to provide beach-related services to the quasi-rich. This is did with notable success to its customer-base while providing virtually nothing to the population that worked there. Its municipal government was based on the premise of "of the influencial, for the wealthy, supported by the down-trodden." This precept cannot be better depicted than by the fact that the blacks who worked in the city's nyriiad hotels and business not only lived literally on the wrong side of the railway tracks but also lived in an area not incorporated into the city until the 20th Century so that the administration did not have to provide services to them.
The Administrations also subscribed to the "no honor among thieves" doctrine by engaging in perpetual internicine warfare among themselves to win the mayoralty and patronage dispensations. But, irregardless of whomsoever was in power, there was adherence to the notion that public funds were - after appropriate skimming - only to be spent on the tourists. This left the city with an elegant ocean facing facade backed by a rotting infrastructure.
With the advent of cheap airfare in the 1960s, tourists ceased to come to the Jersey Shore, choosing instead sites in the Caribbean and Mexico. With the slowdown in revenue, the city collapsed inwardly and, by the 1970/1980 period devolved into the Beruit cum Baghdad appearance it has to this day.
Wolff portrays this history in a clear, concise fashion and does name the names and cite the crimes. His appraisals are scrupulously honest and fair. He points out that the tendency to fortget anything more than, say, five blocks from the boardwalk was not limited by race, color, creed or place of national origin; in a way, he provces that corruption is the best example of diversity.
All in all, an excellent book. It broke my heart to read it.
Down the Shore October 26, 2005
Richard G. Weissman
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is a great resource. As a person who grew up "down the shore" adjacent to Asbury Park, I've learned a tremendous amount about the area's history. Interesting read with a great level of detail and chapter notes. I had borrowed it from the library but wanted my own copy to add to my shore book collection.
Who knew? October 22, 2005
Nathaniel Whalen (Chicago)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Who knew that the history of a town that I had never heard of in New Jersey would yield such an interesting read? The town is set up in such a way that it resembles some of the seedy racist behaviors that all of us would like to believe don't exist anymore but need to come to terms with.
There is plenty of talk about Springsteen, but there is also plenty of well-researched information on the rest of the love-to-hate-'em characters in the town.
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