The Last Good Time: Skinny D'Amato, the Notorious 500 Club, and the Rise and Fall of Atlantic City by Jonathan Van Meter is a 296-page hardcover published in 2003 by Crown Publishers, New York, and is a stated first edition. The dust jacket has barely noticeable surface rubbing. Inside, there is an inscription on the front end paper in ink. Otherwise, the pages are clean and unmarked and the binding is tight.
The Last Good Time is a richly layered epic that brings to life a fascinating place, its politics, people, and culture, through the portrait of one of Atlantic City's most famous families--the powerful, flamboyant, and ultimately tragic D'Amatos. Paul "Skinny" D'Amato created and presided over the 500 Club, the celebrated supper club that entertained thousands of Americans and helped guide the careers of the great Rat Pack performers--Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Frank Sinatra. Skinny was at the center of it all, hovering behind the scenes during the zenith of one of the world's most notorious playgrounds.
Veteran magazine writer Jonathan Van Meter captures the volatile history of twentieth-century Atlantic City--from the days of Prohibition and smoky speakeasies to the city's heyday of imported Hollywood glamour and glitz after World War II; from the near demise of the resort in the 1970s to the city's current era of legal "gaming" and dazzling high-tech hotel/casinos.
ISBN: 0-609-60877-0
