Once a grand tourist mecca, Atlantic City, New Jersey, has fallen on hard times. Temple Professor of History Bryant Simon visited National Public Radio s Fresh Air, one of the most popular and influential radio shows in the U.S., to talk about the area s ups and downs.

Atlantic City [was] Disneyland before there [was] Disneyland, Simon told host Dave Davies. It s really a city at the beach. It s not some quaint town with dunes and white clapboard houses. It s a town that s vertical. And so it produces a 20th century urban fantasy at the beach and in many ways becomes, because of that, America on steroids its best and worst features bloated and exaggerated.

[node:pullquote]Simon author of Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America and a native of southern New Jersey shared his observations about Atlantic City s public spaces, its evolving demographics and its ill-fated embrace of gambling. (Archived audio and a full transcript of the episode are available online.)

Simon also has discussed how Atlantic City is portrayed on TV and in film in The New Yorker, toured the city s unusual sites with a Washington Post travel reporter and lamented how the city tied its fate to gambling in The New York Times and on WNYC s The Leonard Lopate Show.

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