Customer Reviews

The Last Good Time: Skinny D'Amato, the Notorious 500 Club, & the Rise and Fall of Atlantic City

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The new and the old Atlantic City!

A fast read from the days of the old Steel Pier right up to the Resort Casinos that line the Boardwalk today.

Van Meter starts this journey as he arrives in town to work at Atlantic City Magazine. He gets word about a "sale" at the home of the late Paul "Skinny" D'Amato, the owner of the famous "500 Club." This is 1986 and Atlantic City is now a gambling mecca.

Van Meter quickly becomes enthralled with D'Amato and the history of the city and figures he's a got a pretty good book on his hands. He's right!

The Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin/Marilyn Monore/ Mob connections drive the narrative and the reader gets caught up in their world. Van Meter keeps the pace with the rich and famous and their connection to D'Amato rolling along, and you get to go for the ride.

Damn good ride! All 296 pages of it. Recommended!

Jonathan Van Meter's book is a COMPELLING story,
rich with Atlantic City history, about a man and
a time gone by. I am not old enough to have ex-
perienced that time, but Van Meter's words
catapulted me into an era that seemed thrilling.
I highly recommend this book.

As often I am call "old school" it was new and refreshing for me to read of the old Atlantic City. I thought Jon Van Meter brought back to life a time that has been dead far too long. I would strongly recomend it to anyone who loves the golden area in American history.

This is great reading!
It's a wonderful journey down the nostalgic road back to the endless antics and travels of The Rat Pack (Sinatra, Bishop, Lewis, Martin, Lawford, and Davis, Jr.). Also, you'll find lots of good history on Atlantic City, and, on Joe Dimagio, George Raft, Marilyn Monroe, and many other celebrity notables who lived "on the fringe."
You'll read all new stuff in here! Well-researched and a real page-turner. My highest recommendation to readers of all interest areas.

From the beginning to the end this book is a page turner. The
history of Atlantic City is fasinating and it is an exciting journey through the lives of the D'Amato family and their celebrity friends (ie Sinatra, Di Maggio, Kennedy and Giancana). I recommend this book highly!

Friendly & largely unvarnished biography of a guy who loved Atlantic City more than the casino owners do. Skinny walked with ease among the high & the low, rich & poor. "That's Life" could be his theme song. Skinny used the 1946 success of Dean & Jerry at the 500 to help a down-&-out Frank & make a lifelong friend (Sinatra was wildly popular in A.C. when Hollywood treated him like a bum). Skinny kept a nightclub going at 6 South Missouri Ave. for thirty years. He was as mobbed up as you'd expect from someone running a gambling establishment behind a club in A.C., but nobody owned him. His biggest business & public relations mistake was getting involved in Sinatra's Cal-Neva mess with Sam Giancana. There were horrifying, tragic events in his family; Van Meter interviewed Skinny's son in a prison. The 500 burned down in 1973. Resorts International opened in 1978. Paul "Skinny" D'amato lived long enough after gambling became legal to see some evidence it would no more preserve the working class & ethnic neighborhoods of his hometown than his own high roller hotel room card games had. The casinos destroyed them. Pity, the D'amato family couldn't do something with the 500 Club name, license it to a casino as a lasting tribute to Atlantic City's most memorable host.

What a great story of a city (Atlantic City) and a man (Skinny D'Amato) who was larger than life. I enjoyed the rise and fall and re-rise of AC.

I was swept up with the history of Victorian Era resort and wish that the old hotels were still there today. I'm a sucker for old, historic buildings. To read about the decline of AC and the revitilisation with the casinos in the late 1970s/early 1980s was also interesting reading.

At the center of it all was Skinny - friend to the stars, on the fringe of the mob; an interesting character to say the least. This is a "two thumbs up" book - recommend to anyone interested in nearly a century of American history.

This book does an excellent job of telling the "story" of Atlantic City (& Skinny D'Amato) in a fascinating way! Anyone interested in gambling, nightclubs and Atlantic City.."The Naughty Queen" quote taken from another book on Atlantic City..it's a must read!

A wonderfully written account of Atlantic City History. Jonathan Van Meter, with the help of PaulaJane D'Amato, and many others, relates to the reader what this wonderful city, and most generous man was all about. Difficult to put down. Highly recommend this wonderful book!

DISAPPOINTING NARRATIVE, I KNEW MARIE FALIGITORE, ALOT LEFT OUT OF HER STORY. dON'T BUY THE BOOK. i DONATED IT TO MY LIBRARY.