"The collapse of American towns and cities is now so complete that our collective memory of why they existed and how they came to be is nearly lost. Helen-Chantal Pike's history of Asbury Park is a worthy, lively, and well-researched effort to correct this cultural amnesia."-James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere

"Glory Days is that rare wonder-a nostalgic history that entertains as well as informs. It richly succeeds in bringing a bygone era vividly to life. I enjoyed it thoroughly."-Persia Walker, author of Harlem Redux

"Asbury Park's Glory Days is a splendid overview of one of the Jersey Shore's most colorful cities. Well-written and wonderfully presented, the book belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in Jersey pop culture and history."-Robert Santelli, director of Experience Music Project and author of Guide to the Jersey Shore

"Helen-Chantal Pike tells the best story."-National Geographic

"A Jerseyana journalist."-New York Times

Long before Bruce Springsteen picked up a guitar; before Danny DeVito drove a taxi; before Jack Nicholson flew over the cuckoo's nest, Asbury Park was a seashore Shangri-La filled with shimmering odes to civic greatness, world-renowned baby parades, temples of retail, and atmospheric movie palaces. It was a magnet for tourists, a summer vacation mecca-to some degree New Jersey's own Coney Island.

More recent years, however, have seen this once-thriving destination give way to deserted streets and rampant political corruption. As real-estate money moved out, pan-handlers and drug dealers moved in. In the 1980s Asbury Park's mayor was desperately trying to find a buyer for its once crowded boardwalk, and the amusement circuit's two vintage carousels were sold and shipped out of the state. Years of economic strife transformed this booming seaside city into a ghost town eventually tagged "Beirut on the Jersey Shore."

In Asbury Park's Glory Days award-winning author Helen-Chantal Pike chronicles the city's heyday-the ninety-year period between 1890 and 1980. Pike illuminates the historical conditions contributing to the town's cycle of booms and recessions. She explains that the area has had four "peaks" of popularity-the 1890s, 1920s, 1940s, and 1960s-all periods during which the city thrived as a cultural center. She investigates the factors that influenced these peaks, such as location, lodging, dining, nightlife, merchandising, and immigration, and how and why millions of people spent their leisure time within that one-square mile boundary on the northern coast of the state. Pike also includes an epilogue describing recent attempts to resurrect this once-vibrant community.

Accompanied by hundreds of images, dozens of interviews, and many sidebars on attractions, Asbury Park's Glory Days is much more than a history; it is a heartfelt chronicle that evokes the atmosphere of a New Jersey amusement and cultural icon that is distinctly American.

Helen-Chantal Pike is a freelance writer, photographer, and lecturer. Her works have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald, Christian Science Monitor, Vermont Life, and New Jersey Monthly. For three years she was a travel columnist for the Boston Herald.