Better in the Poconos

Antoine Dutot opened the Kittatinny Hotel in 1829, the first tourist hotel in the Poconos, and it failed. Lawrence Squeri traces what came after: how this corner of north-eastern Pennsylvania kept reinventing itself, from William Cullen Bryant's hunting grounds and Victorian croquet lawns to ethnic resorts serving Philadelphia and New York, the honeymoon boom of the 1940s and 1950s, and couples resorts with heart-shaped bathtubs and champagne-glass Jacuzzis. Artificial snow brought the super-resorts, and families now come for ski slopes and water slides.

Squeri treats it as a business history, with innkeepers forever competing against the Catskills, the Jersey shore, Florida and the Caribbean. He fills it with people too: temperance ladies and the sinners they targeted, rich Quakers, Jewish socialists, Klansmen, immigrants and service workers. A lively, well-grounded social history for anyone curious about how Americans learned to take a holiday.