Stories and portraits of people I have met along the beaches, boardwalks and towns of the Jersey Shore.

Real People. Real Stories. The Real Jersey Shore.

Summer visitors and year-round residents alike are sure to discover Jersey Shore lore that captures their fancy in this entertaining account of the people, places, and events that have shaped New Jersey's famous shoreline. From ghost stories and the comic misadventures of the early Miss America Pageant to the dynamics of the changing coastline and poignant portraits of traditional crafts workers, Russell Roberts and Rich Youmans have chronicled the fascinating history and heritage of the New Jersey Shore. In this book you'll meet the luminaries who've frequented the Shore--from President Ulysses Grant strolling through Long Branch to Grace Kelly learning to surf at Ocean City. You'll find out why the boardwalk was invented, and also why early ones were removable. Join the authors as they pay tribute to the Shore's forgotten inventors, including Simon Lake, who some consider the true father of the modern submarine. Relive the Jersey Shore's role in wartime and learn the story of the mysterious Nazi submarine sunken off of Point Pleasant Beach. Read about Lucy the Margate Elephant, as a well as her two long-gone "cousins." Discover all this and more as Roberts and Youmans explore the vast uncharted heritage of the New Jersey Shore.

This coffee table book features more than one hundred sixty paintings, vignettes, and portraits by the Jersey Shore's premier, neo-primitive folk artist, Dick LaBonte. Here are all of LaBonte's nostalgic paintings of turn-of-the-century and present day life at the Jersey Shore featuring Bay Head, Mantoloking, Point Pleasant Beach, Barnegat Bay, Spring Lake, Sea Girt, Manasquan, Sea Bright, and more locations--plus many other scenes taking place in America or the artist's imagination. Fans who have seen only a few of LaBonte's paintings in the past will be amazed at the scope of his body of work presented in this book and realize all the beauty and fun they've been missing! Charming and informative descriptions of each image by the artist, a biography, plus a foreword and introduction to the paintings will further your understanding of LaBonte's art and life. LaBonte's text is also rich with historical facts about the Jeresy Shore and the locations he paints.

Interviews and Portraits of over 50 lifeguards from 20 beach patrols along the Jersey Shore.

Winner of the 2005 New Jersey Author Award for Scholarly Non-Fiction from the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance Long before Bruce Springsteen picked up a guitar; before Danny DeVito drove a taxi; before Jack Nicholson flew over the cuckoo's nest, Asbury Park was a seashore Shangri-La filled with shimmering odes to civic greatness, world-renowned baby parades, temples of retail, and atmospheric movie palaces. It was a magnet for tourists, a summer vacation mecca-to some degree New Jersey's own Coney Island. In Asbury Park's Glory Days, award-winning author Helen-Chantal Pike chronicles the city's heyday-the ninety-year period between 1890 and 1980. Pike illuminates the historical conditions contributing to the town's cycle of booms and recessions. She investigates the factors that influenced these peaks, such as location, lodging, dining, nightlife, merchandising, and immigration, and how and why millions of people spent their leisure time within this one-square-mile boundary on the northern coast of the state. Pike also includes an epilogue describing recent attempts to resurrect this once-vibrant city.

Upon the 100th anniversary of the most terrifying stretch of shark attacks in American history--a wave said to have been the inspiration for Jaws--comes a reissue of the classic Lyons Press account and investigation. In July 1916, a time when World War I loomed over America and New York City was in the midst of a deadly polio epidemic, the tri-state area sought relief at the Jersey shore. The Atlantic’s refreshing waters proved to be utterly inhospitable, however. In just twelve days, four swimmers were violently and fatally mauled in separate shark attacks, and a fifth swimmer escaped an attack within inches of his life. In this thoroughly researched account, Dr. Richard Fernicola, the leading expert on the attacks, presents a riveting portrait, investigation, and scientific analysis of the terrifying days against the colorful backdrop of America in 1916 in Twelve Days of Terror.