Charles Denson

Coney Island: Lost and Found is authored by historian Charles Denson, who serves as the Executive Director of the Coney Island History Project. (To visit that site: www.coneyislandhistory.org ) Denson grew up on Coney Island and is passionately in love with this corner of New York. His book combines a history of Coney Island from the time of its discovery by Dutch and English explorers in the mid-1600s with personal reminiscences of Coney from his childhood and adult life. With hundreds of archival and modern photographs and illustrations, as well as a wonderfully informative text, Coney Island: Lost and Found is a great picture book, an intimate memoir, and an intelligent account of all things Coney -- from the rise and fall of the great amusement parks (Dreamland, Luna Park, and Steeplechase), to the decay of Coney, to its sputtering resurgence in the mid-1980s and 90s. Denson particularly focuses on Coney Island from the 1950s to 2000, so this isn’t a definitive history of the birth and glory days of the amusement parks. But I’d highly recommend to anyone looking to take a virtual or actual trip to Coney before it is transformed yet again as Mayor Bloomberg and developer Joe Sitt design and build their version of a Coney Island for the 21st Century.… (meer)