Featuring a stunning gallery of portraits by the world's finest poets, essayists, and fiction writers--including Walt Whitman, Stephen Crane, Jose Marti, Maxim Gorky, Federico Garcia Lorca, Isaac Bashevis Singer, E. E. Cummings, Djuna Barnes, Colson Whitehead, Robert Olen Butler, and Katie Roiphe--this anthology is the first to focus on the unique history and transporting experience of a beloved fixture of the New York City landscape.Moody, mystical, and enchanting, Coney Island has thrilled newcomers and soothed native New Yorkers for decades. With itsFeaturing a stunning gallery of portraits by the world's finest poets, essayists, and fiction writers--including Walt Whitman, Stephen Crane, Jose Marti, Maxim Gorky, Federico Garcia Lorca, Isaac Bashevis Singer, E. E. Cummings, Djuna Barnes, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Colson Whitehead, Robert Olen Butler, and Katie Roiphe--A Coney Island Reader is the first collection to focus on the unique history and transporting experience of a beloved fixture of the New York City landscape. Coney Island has long offered a kaleidoscopic panorama of people, places, and events. This anthology captures the highs and lows of that sensation, with works that imagine Coney Island as a restful resort, a playground for the masses, and a symbol of America's democratic spirit, as well as a Sodom by the sea, a garish display of capitalist excess, and a paradigm of urban decay. As complex as the city of which it is a part, Coney Island engenders limitless perspectives, a composite inspiring everyone who encounters it to sing its electric song. fantasy entertainments, renowned beach foods, world-class boardwalk, and expansive beach, it provides a welcome respite from the city's dense neighborhoods, unrelenting traffic, and somber grid. Coney Island has long offered a kaleidoscopic panorama of people, places, and events, creating, as Lawrence Ferlinghetti once wrote, "a Coney Island of the mind." This anthology captures the highs and lows of that sensation, with works that imagine Coney Island as a restful resort, a playground for the masses, and a symbol of America's democratic spirit, as well as a Sodom by the sea, a garish display of capitalist excess, and a paradigm of urban decay. As complex as the city of which it is a part, Coney Island engenders limitless perspectives, a composite inspiring everyone who encounters it to sing its electric song.

A timely, important addition to anthologies of New York writing. A Coney Island Reader will be welcomed by urban historians and a general public that continues to be fascinated by Coney Island's ramshackle roller coaster of a history -- Bryan Waterman, New York University Consistently enticing, absorbing, and informative, A Coney Island Reader will delight anyone interested in the rich history of this fascinating resort. -- John Kasson, author of Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century

List of IllustrationsForeword, by Kevin BakerAcknowledgmentsA Note on the TextSelected Chronology of Coney IslandIntroductionThe Beginnings Through 1896 ["Clam-Bake at Coney Island"], by Walt Whitman"Coney Island", by Charles Dawson Shanly"To Coney Island", by William Henry Bishop"Coney Island", by José Martí"Coney Island's Failing Days", by Stephen Crane"Coney Island", by Julian RalphThe Era of the Three Great Amusement Parks, 1897–1911 "Marvelous Coney Island", by Guy Wetmore Carryl"Human Need of Coney Island", by Richard Le Gallienne"Boredom", by Maxim Gorky"The Master Showman of Coney Island", by Peter Lyon"Amusing the Million", by Frederic Thompson"The Way of the Girl", by Belle Lindner Israels"Why Is Coney?", by Reginald Wright Kauffman"The Coney Island Excursion", by Kathy PeissSamantha at Coney Island and a Thousand Other Islands, by Marietta Holley"Coney Island", by Sara Teasdale"The Greater Coney", by O. HenryDreamland, by Kevin Baker"In Dreams Begin Responsibilities", by Delmore Schwartz"Sunday", by Robert Olen Butler"Ruins Help Draw 350,000 to Coney", by New York TimesThe Nickel Empire: Coney in Transition, 1912–1948 "The Tingling, Tangling Tango as 'Tis Tripped at Coney Isle", by Djuna BarnesNew Cosmopolis, by James Huneker"Human Nature with the Brakes Off—Or: Why the Schoolma'am Walked into the Sea", by Edward F. Tilyou"Coney", by Giuseppe Cautela"Coney Island", by E. E. Cummings"Landscape of a Vomiting Multitude (Dusk at Coney Island)", by Federico García Lorca"A Day in Coney Island", by Isaac Bashevis Singer"Into the Night Life", by Henry MillerNow and Then, by Joseph HellerThe Electric Michelangelo, by Sarah HallAttachment to a Letter to Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, by Robert Moses"To Heaven by Subway", by FortuneConey, by Amram Ducovny"Stranger at Coney Island", by Kenneth FearingThe Years of Decline and the Hope of Rebirth, 1949 to the PresentA Coney Island of the Mind, by Lawrence FerlinghettiThe Warriors, by Sol Yurick"Coney Island in November", by Josephine W. Johnson"My Son the Murderer", by Bernard Malamud"Mayor Blasts TA Brass on Coney Island Debacle", by George Todd"Kwan's Coney Island", by Edward Hoagland"Coney Island 1969", by Edwin Torres"Coney Island", by Colson Whitehead"A Coney Island of the Mind", by Katie Roiphe"City Planning Begins Public Review on Rezoning of Coney Island", by New York City Department of City Planning"Comments on the Revised Draft Scope of Analysis for Coney Island Rezoning Project", by Municipal Art Society"Confessions of a Coney Island Sideshow Performer", by Donald Thomas (Donny Vomit)"A Coney Island of the Mind", by Maureen F. McHughAppendix: Coney Island in Movies and Music