For decades, leaders in Newark, New Jersey, have claimed their city is about to return to its vibrant past. How accurate is this prediction? Is Newark on the verge of revitalization? Robert Curvin, who was one of New Jersey’s outstanding civil rights leaders, examines the city, chronicling its history, politics, and culture. Throughout the pages of Inside Newark, Curvin approaches his story both as an insider who is rooting for Newark and as an objective social scientist illuminating the causes and effects of sweeping changes in the city Based on historical records and revealing interviews with over one hundred residents and officials, Inside Newark traces Newark’s history from the 1950s, when the city was a thriving industrial center, to the era of Mayor Cory Booker. Along the way, Curvin covers the disturbances of July 1967, called a riot by the media and a rebellion by residents; the administration of Kenneth Gibson, the first black mayor of a large northeastern city; and the era of Sharpe James, who was found guilty of corruption. Curvin examines damaging housing and mortgage policies, the state takeover of the failing school system, the persistence of corruption and patronage, Newark’s shifting ethnic and racial composition, positive developments in housing and business complexes, and the reign of ambitious mayor Cory Booker. Inside Newark reveals a central weakness that continues to plague Newark—that throughout this history, elected officials have not risen to the challenges they have faced. Curvin calls on those in positions of influence to work for the social and economic improvement of all groups and concludes with suggestions for change, focusing on education reform, civic participation, financial management, partnerships with agencies and business, improving Newark’s City Council, and limiting the term of the mayor. If Newark’s leadership can encompass these changes, Newark will have a chance at a true turnaround. Watch a video with Robert Curvin: Watch video now. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-d6zV2OQ8A).

For the first time in forty years, the story of one of America's most maligned cities is told in all its grit and glory. With its open-armed embrace of manufacturing, Newark, New Jersey, rode the Industrial Revolution to great prominence and wealth that lasted well into the twentieth century. In the postwar years, however, Newark experienced a perfect storm of urban troublesùpolitical corruption, industrial abandonment, white flight, racial conflict, crime, poverty. Cities across the United States found themselves in similar predicaments, yet Newark stands out as an exceptional case. Its saga reflects the rollercoaster ride of Everycity U.S.A., only with a steeper rise, sharper turns, and a much more dramatic plunge. How Newark Became Newark is a fresh, unflinching popular history that spans the city's epic transformation from a tiny Puritan village into a manufacturing powerhouse, on to its desperate struggles in the twentieth century and beyond. After World War II, unrest mounted as the minority community was increasingly marginalized, leading to the wrenching civic disturbances of the 1960s. Though much of the city was crippled for years, How Newark Became Newark is also a story of survival and hope. Today, a real estate revival and growing population are signs that Newark is once again in ascendance.

""Well researched, readable, and very interesting"" --Choice ""Nazis in Newark is a model local history that reaches well beyond the border of Essex County, New Jersey, to the national and international arenas. By recounting so many sides of the complicated encounter between Nazis and Jews in Newark, Warren Grover has fashioned a world of street politics, boycotts, Nazi louts and Jewish bruisers that is as compelling and telling in its detail as any grand tome on the supposed failures and successes of American Jewish resistence to the Holocaust... I recommend Nazis in Newark. I intend to use it as a cornerstone of my teaching for some time to come."" --Professor Michael Alexander The Jewish Quarterly Review ""Very few people today realize that the U.S. mainland was the scene of battles against the Nazis. Warren Grover has produced an outstanding work on this subject. The writing is incisive, the ideas are both original and insightful and the thesis masterfully developed and executed. Must reading for anyone interested in American history and ethnic studies."" --William B. Helmreich, CUNY Graduate Center and author of The Enduring Community ""Thanks to tenacious research and deft story-telling, Warren Grover has put the politics of extremism in one city in the shadow of Fascism, Nazism and Communism, and has thus illuminated the terrible dilemmas of the 1930s. His book also compels the reader to consider an historical anomaly: champions of the Third Reich come across as victims whose civil liberties were infringed, and the gangs of Newark responsible for these violations tended to be Jewish. Such ironies make Nazis in Newark worth the interest of anyone intrigued by ethnic conflict and politcal violence in urban America."" --Stephen Whitfield, Max Richter Professor of American Civilization, Brandeis University ""In this fast-paced, thorough study of anti-Nazism in Newark, scholar Warren Grover tells th

Founded in 1666 by stalwart Puritan settlers along the Passaic River, Newark has evolved over the centuries from an ecclesiastical hamlet into a metropolis renowned as a center of industry and opportunity. The history of Newark is an engaging tale of American ambition, resolve, innovation, and spirit, propelling the city into a premier role on the world's economic and cultural stage. From Newark's initial settlement to the present, this comprehensive volume chronicles the fascinating story of the city's past, bringing to life many of the events and characters that shaped its unique heritage and traditions. Readers will journey across epochs of change, on horseback and trolley, in stagecoach and automobile, on plank roads and mammoth cement turnpikes, and will experience firsthand the community's conflicts and developments, from its days as a strategic crossroads for both Continental and British troops during the American Revolution to its elevation as an industrial hub for businesses in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Touching upon its human face, Newark, New Jersey recognizes an assortment of religious, political, and cultural figures and leaders, such as the famed Reverends Abraham Pierson Sr. and Aaron Burr Sr., the imaginative entrepreneurial pioneer Seth Boyden, and the quintessential American inventor Thomas A. Edison, and details their impact on the growing community.

To many, Newark seems a profound symbol of postwar liberalism’s failings: an impoverished, deeply divided city where commitments to integration and widespread economic security went up in flames during the 1967 riots. While it’s true that these failings shaped Newark’s postwar landscape and economy, as Mark Krasovic shows, that is far from the whole story. The Newark Frontier shows how, during the Great Society, urban liberalism adapted and grew, defining itself less by centralized programs and ideals than by administrative innovation and the small-scale, personal interactions generated by community action programs, investigative commissions, and police-community relations projects. Paying particular attention to the fine-grained experiences of Newark residents, Krasovic reveals that this liberalism was rooted in an ethic of experimentation and local knowledge. He illustrates this with stories of innovation within government offices, the dynamic encounters between local activists and state agencies, and the unlikely alliances among nominal enemies. Krasovic makes clear that postwar liberalism’s eventual fate had as much to do with the experiments waged in Newark as it did with the violence that rocked the city in the summer of 1967.

#1 bestseller and soon to be motion picture, Newark Minutemen has bridged generations. The epic based-on-true story of forbidden love and unholy heroism is set against the backdrop of an America ripped apart by the Great Depression and on the brink of war. Newark, NJ, 1938. Millions are out of work and robbed of dignity. A shadow Hitler-Nazi party called the German-American Bund that is led by an American Fuhrer threatens to swallow democracy. In this dangerous time of star-spangled fascism, a romance forms between the Jewish boxer, Yael and the daughter of the enemy, Krista. But 1930s America pulls them apart as Krista’s people want Yael’s dead. Then Yael is recruited by the mob to go undercover for the FBI against her people and bring down the German-American Bund. Author Leslie K. Barry captures an authentic and brave portrait of a lost America searching for identity, preserving legacy and saving its soul. It is a heartbreaking novel that crosses generations as it honors the fragility of freedom.

Newark’s volatile past is infamous. The city has become synonymous with the Black Power movement and urban crisis. Its history reveals a vibrant and contentious political culture punctuated by traditional civic pride and an understudied tradition of protest in the black community. Newark charts this important city's place in the nation, from its founding in 1666 by a dissident Puritan as a refuge from intolerance, through the days of Jim Crow and World War II civil rights activism, to the height of postwar integration and the election of its first black mayor. In this broad and balanced history of Newark, Kevin Mumford applies the concept of the public sphere to the problem of race relations, demonstrating how political ideas and print culture were instrumental in shaping African American consciousness. He draws on both public and personal archives, interpreting official documents - such as newspapers, commission testimony, and government records—alongside interviews, political flyers, meeting minutes, and rare photos. From the migration out of the South to the rise of public housing and ethnic conflict, Newark explains the impact of African Americans on the reconstruction of American cities in the twentieth century.