cover image The War at the Shore: Donald Trump, Steve Wynn, and the Epic War to Save Atlantic City

The War at the Shore: Donald Trump, Steve Wynn, and the Epic War to Save Atlantic City

Richard D. “Skip” Bronson, with Andrew Meisler and A.M. Silver. Overlook, $26 (240p) ISBN 978-1-4683-0046-8

Real estate developer Bronson describes his role in revitalizing Atlantic City’s gambling and tourism industries in this unfocused business memoir. Between touching on Bronson’s personal life and status as a self-made man, most of the narrative is spent in the 1990s, detailing the lengthy process of trying to open a new casino on the East Coast. Bronson became involved with gaming when, after his previous real estate ventures collapsed, he formed a partnership with famed Las Vegas developer Steve Wynn. The two first set their sights on Bronson’s economically depressed hometown of Hartford, Conn., but failed to win over policymakers. A strategic shift to Atlantic City found the pair outbidding Donald Trump for land on which to build their planned Le Jardin casino. Bronson and his coauthors wring drama from the struggle to win public opinion against Trump’s public broadsides, but beyond Trump’s famous name this anticlimactic story’s general appeal is stunted by its conclusion—a takeover of the development which shut out Wynn and Bronson—and by unrewarding digressions into celebrity name-dropping and tangential anecdotes. (June)