Discover the darker side of the Garden State with this anthology of gritty mystery stories. Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each volume is compromised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct location within the geographical area of the book. In New Jersey Noir, a star-studded cast of authors sifts through the hidden dirt of the Garden State. Featuring brand-new stories (and a few poems) by Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Safran Foer, Robert Pinsky, Edmund White & Michael Carroll, Richard Burgin, Pulitzer Prize–winner Paul Muldoon, Sheila Kohler, C.K. Williams, Gerald Stern, Lou Manfredo, S.A. Solomon, Bradford Morrow, Jonathan Santlofer, Jeffrey Ford, S.J. Rozan, Barry N. Malzberg & Bill Pronzini, Hirsh Sawhney, and Robert Arellano. Praise for New Jersey Noir “Oates’s introduction to Akashic’s noir volume dedicated to the Garden State, with its evocative definition of the genre, is alone worth the price of the book . . . Highlights include Lou Manfredo’s “Soul Anatomy,” in which a politically connected rookie cop is involved in a fatal shooting in Camden; S.J. Rozan’s “New Day Newark,” in which an elderly woman takes a stand against two drug-dealing gangs; and Jonathan Santlofer’s “Lola,” in which a struggling Hoboken artist finds his muse . . . . Poems by C.K. Williams, Paul Muldoon, and others—plus photos by Gerald Slota—enhance this distinguished entry.” —Publishers Weekly “It was inevitable that this fine noir series would reach New Jersey. It took longer than some readers might have wanted, but, oh boy, was it worth the wait . . . More than most of the entries in the series, this volume is about mood and atmosphere more than it is about plot and character . . . It should go without saying that regular readers of the noir series will seek this one out, but beyond that, the book also serves as a very good introduction to what is a popular but often misunderstood term and style of writing.” —Booklist, Starred Review “A lovingly collected assortment of tales and poems that range from the disturbing to the darkly humorous.” —Shelf Awareness

New Jersey Fan Club is an eclectic anthology featuring personal essays, interviews, photographs, and comics from a diverse group of writers and artists. An exploration of how the same locale can shape people in different ways, it will inspire readers to look at the Garden State with fresh eyes.

New Jersey: A History of the Garden State presents a fresh, comprehensive overview of New Jersey’s history from the prehistoric era to the present. The findings of archaeologists, political, social, and economic historians provide a new look at how the Garden State has evolved. The state has a rich Native American heritage and complex colonial history. It played a pivotal role in the American Revolution, early industrialization, and technological developments in transportation, including turnpikes, canals, and railroads. The nineteenth century saw major debates over slavery. While no Civil War battles were fought in New Jersey, most residents supported it while questioning the policies of the federal government. Next, the contributors turn to industry, urbanization, and the growth of shore communities. A destination for immigrants, New Jersey continued to be one of the most diverse states in the nation. Many of these changes created a host of social problems that reformers tried to minimize during the Progressive Era. Settlement houses were established, educational institutions grew, and utopian communities were founded. Most notably, women gained the right to vote in 1920. In the decades leading up to World War II, New Jersey benefited from back-to-work projects, but the rise of the local Ku Klux Klan and the German American Bund were sad episodes during this period. The story then moves to the rise of suburbs, the concomitant decline of the state’s cities, growing population density, and changing patterns of wealth. Deep-seated racial inequities led to urban unrest as well as political change, including such landmark legislation as the Mount Laurel decision. Today, immigration continues to shape the state, as does the tension between the needs of the suburbs, cities, and modest amounts of remaining farmland. Well-known personalities, such as Jonathan Edwards, George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, Dorothea Dix, Thomas Edison, Frank Hague, and Albert Einstein appear in the narrative. Contributors also mine new and existing sources to incorporate fully scholarship on women, minorities, and immigrants. All chapters are set in the context of the history of the United States as a whole, illustrating how New Jersey is often a bellwether for the nation..

This anthology gathers fiction, poetry, memoirs, oral histories, and journalistic pieces by some of the best writers to chronicle the Italian American experience in the Garden State. These works focus on ethnic identity and the distinctive culture of New Jersey, which has long been home to a large and vital Italian American community. Filled with passion, humor, and grace, these writings depict a variety of experiences, including poignant but failed attempts at conformity and the alienation often felt by ethnic Americans. The authors also speak of the strength gained through the preservation of their communities and the realization that it is often the appreciation of their heritage that helps them to succeed. Although presented from the vantage point of only one ethnic group, this book addresses in microcosm the complexities of American identity, depicting situations and conveying emotions that will resonate with people of all immigrant ancestries. Among the many writers featured are Gay Talese, Bill Ervolino, Tom Perrotta, Louise DeSalvo, Carole Mazo, Diane di Prima, and Maria Laurino. Each of the contributors provides a fresh perspective on the diversity, complexity, and richness of the Italian American experience. Publication of this book is made possible in part by a grant from the Institute of Italian and Italian American Heritage Studies, State of New Jersey.

Everything you've ever wanted to know about the Garden State can now be found in one place. This encyclopaedia contains a wealth of information from New Jersey's prehistory to the present covering architecture, arts, biographies, commerce, arts, municipalities and much more.

Winner of the 2017 New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance Author Award, Reference Category See New Jersey history as you read about it! Envisioning New Jersey brings together 650 spectacular images that illuminate the course of the state’s history, from prehistoric times to the present. Readers may think they know New Jersey’s history—the state’s increasing diversity, industrialization, and suburbanization—but the visual record presented here dramatically deepens and enriches that knowledge. Maxine N. Lurie and Richard F. Veit, two leading authorities on New Jersey history, present a smorgasbord of informative pictures, ranging from paintings and photographs to documents and maps. Portraits of George Washington and Molly Pitcher from the Revolution, battle flags from the War of 1812 and the Civil War, women air raid wardens patrolling the streets of Newark during World War II, the Vietnam War Memorial—all show New Jerseyans fighting for liberty. There are also pictures of Thomas Mundy Peterson, the first African American to vote after passage of the Fifteenth Amendment; Paul Robeson marching for civil rights; university students protesting in the 1960s; and Martin Luther King speaking at Monmouth University. The authors highlight the ethnic and religious variety of New Jersey inhabitants with images that range from Native American arrowheads and fishing implements, to Dutch and German buildings, early African American churches and leaders, and modern Catholic and Hindu houses of worship. Here, too, are the great New Jersey innovators from Thomas Edison to the Bell Labs scientists who worked on transistors. Compiled by the authors of New Jersey: A History of the Garden State, this volume is intended as an illustrated companion to that earlier volume. Envisioning New Jersey also stands on its own because essays synthesizing each era accompany the illustrations. A fascinating gold mine of images from the state’s past, Envisioning New Jersey is the first illustrated book on the Garden State that covers its complete history, capturing the amazing transformation of New Jersey over time. View sample pages (http://issuu.com/rutgersuniversitypress/docs/lurie_veit_envisioning_sample) Thanks to the New Jersey Historical Commission, the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, and generous individual donors for making this project possible.

The extraordinary diversity of New Jersey is captured in this revised and up-to-date edition of This Is New Jersey, for forty years a classic and one of the most popular books ever written about the state. History, current problems, and opportunities for the future are skillfully blended in a book that makes it clear that there is a lot more to the state than can be imagined by those who speed through it on any of New Jersey's numerous interstates or railways. Ranking forty-sixth in size, but sixth in population, New Jersey is the most urban and densely populated of the fifty states. In spite of that, the state truly deserves its nickname, Garden State, and it has a large recreation industry. John T. Cunningham examines the state county by county from the hill country to the city belt; from the dairy farms to the Jersey shore. Historically, settlement in New Jersey goes back to the Lenni Lenape Indians, to the colonists, and to the state's place as the crossroads of the American Revolution. To those who do not know the state's byways and quiet towns, it appears that highways abound. Yet there are also many thousands of acres of precious woodland preserved by park commissions in Essex and Union counties. In northern New Jersey alone, there are more than a million acres of hardwood forests. In southern New Jersey, over a million acres of the fascinating Pinelands account for almost a quarter of the total state area. New Jersey is a land of lakes and mountains, of fishing docks and two-hundred-year-old houses, of farms and factories, of old universities and new commuting towns. This fourth edition retains the popular pictures of each county courthouse, the heart of county history andadministration. This fully redesigned edition is enhanced by several four-color and over 100 black-and-white illustrations by noted New Jersey photographer Walter Choroszewski.