"Wonderfully evocative…a grand, sad story of racism and real estate, political hardball and seaside pleasure-seeking."--A.O. Scott, New York Times Book Review

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. Starting with the town's founding as a religious promised land, music journalist and poet Daniel Wolff plots a course through Asbury Park's 130 years of entwined social and musical history, in a story that captures all the allure and heartbreak of the American dream.