New Jersey Books

This book conveys the words of a young Union soldier who was captured and taken to the Southern prison they called Andersonville. This detailed account taken from the diary of Charles Hopkins tells a story of survival and horror. It makes you imagine trying to survive in a disease riddened prison with barely any food or fresh water. Read this book because it will be one you will never forget

This first person account provides a wealth of insight into the day-to-day rituals of "life" in one of the most forbidding Civil War prison camps. Throughout his trials, however, Charles Hopkins never loses his faith in humanity and even manages to endure with a sense of humor. His uplifting story bears testimony to the strength of the human spirit under fire. Hopkins' style of writing is descriptive and conversational, and works well with the enlightening information and photos supplied by editors Mr. Styple and Mr. Fitzpatrick. I highly recommend this book to all who are interested in the Civil War and in becoming acquainted with one of its many unsung heroes.

Through her analysis we learn about astrology, the exciting lives of those she writes about, and how the stars will determine events - fortunately or unfortunately for some. I've consulted with Ms. deJersey and she has offered not only her advice based on her readings, but also personal coaching. I appreciated both - I hope she writes another book!

This insightful book of how astrology helped in the lives of people who were significantly influenced and guided was a real pleasure to read. As a student of astrology I am grateful to read this important book written by a real, honest to God astrologer from the old school. I very much appreciated the way she invited me into her world and narrated events in her life. I loved the beautiful marriage of personal insights and factual astrological interpretations and facts. I am very very interested to know more about this author - is she still around, does she have a web-site, etc.

I bought this book expecting it to be a description of intersting stores and shops, perhaps some places to eat alnog some of the secondary highways of NJ. What I got was the personal history of the author as well as a history of NJ. It was a fascinating read as DiLonno takes out along several of the "500" roads of NJ, which are secondary hgihways designed to supplement the larger, faster roads of the state. DiLonno tells us about the towns you pass thru and described the contrast from one end to the other end, and tells us tales from his own past when he traveled some of these roads with his father. These personal details as well as the interesting and obscure facts about the towns is both fascianting and illuminating. I expected a guide to where to shop and eat and instead I got a history of NJ.

I throughly enjoyed the book, but I must say that B&W pictures suffer from being (IMHO) not crisp or sharp enough, a tad on the dark side and not having enough depth of field. That's not to say they're bad, but I always believe B&W pictures, to be effective need to be the things I mentioned above, and these weren't. The color pictures are good, but there aren;t enough. (Disclaimer: I actually love B&W, and have nothing against it)

One negative: There are 17 roads profiled, in a book of 137 pages so that's roughly 8 pages per road. For some reason he devotes less then one page each to Route 501 & 514. I'm not sure why but since 501 is the only road in the book that goes thru Bergen County, I was disapointed that it was glossed over, especially since Bergen County is home to the earliest colonial settlements anywhere, and since a lot of important history took place here.

Otherwise, an excellent, thought provoking book.

This book is full with interesting facts, tidbits and general information regarding New Jersey's many highways and backroads that make up this great state. DiIonno did a great job putting this book together and I recommend anyone interested in the history and many tidbits about New Jersey to buy this book!

I own this book and am very pleased with it , I agree with other people that it was published much to early it needs more info , other wise a very very good book a must have.

The only thing I could find "wrong" about Paul's book is that it was published before her last and premature (my opinion) inactivation. Well, there IS one more thing "wrong", I was still employed by the Navy at the time and was not allowed to furnish Paul technical history of the ship's 1981/82 reactivation and modernization period. Maybe, if Paul finds the time to revise the book one more time, we can get all that updated. Otherwise, the author brings you the life of a Battleship in a way no other person can do. Well, of course Paul Stillwell can. He SERVED aboard The Big J himself. And that's his style of historical record; the people who made up those ships as the designers, craftsmen and crewmen. I cannot imagine anyone serious about Naval history not wanting this book in their library. Therefore, even if your interest is in cruisers or destroyers or submarines or carriers, you MUST have THIS book because it is about the PEOPLE that made the United States Navy the greatest Naval Force in the history of the world. Richard Landgraff DREADNAUGHT CONSULTING Long Beach, California

No one can deny that casinos have brought money and crowds back to
Atlantic City. Since the first casino opened in 1978, gambling
corporations have invested six billion dollars in the old resort town
and, during the 1990s, more tourists visited Atlantic City than any
other place in the United States including Las Vegas and Disneyworld.
Each year, the city entertains twice the population of metropolitan New
York and those visitors "wager almost enough money to fund the nation's
space program." During the past quarter century, the casinos have
generated eighty percent of the city's total property taxes, five and a
half billion tax dollars for the state, and created over 42,000 new
jobs.

Despite these impressive numbers, in "Boardwalk of Dreams" Bryant Simon
concludes that "the gaming industry has not saved Atlantic City."
Instead, he finds that bringing casinos to the New Jersey shore was a
"devil's bargain." Twenty-six years of gaming, he argues, have left the
city in many ways worse off than it was in the mid-1970s when it was a
decaying, honky tonk resort whose best days had long passed. Today,
Simon maintains, Atlantic City is a dysfunctional place with a jarring
landscape of fortress-like casinos surrounded by boarded storefronts and
derelict houses. Only a few blocks from Donald Trump's "gaudy and
gilded showplace" the Taj Mahal, "are some of the loneliest, most
desolate streets in America."

For Simon, an urban historian at Temple University in Philadelphia, the
story of Atlantic City is a colorful but heartbreaking tale. Long known
as the "Queen of American Resorts,"Atlantic City grew famous in the
first half of the twentieth century as the premier vacation destination
for the middle class. Using a formula later perfected by Las Vegas, the
city's hotels offered exotic architecture and elaborate amenities at a
moderate cost. Salesmen and bookkeepers luxuriated with their families
in lobbies filled with overstuffed chairs, chandeliers, and Chippendale
furniture, but then retreated to rooms that they could afford. At night,
Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Dean Martin, Louie Prima, and Louis
Armstrong provided stylish entertainment to crowds with moderate
incomes. Vacationers donned their flashiest outfits, paraded down the
boardwalk, and proved to the world that they had made it. As an escapist
retreat for the middle class, Simon writes, Atlantic City "was
Disneyland a generation before there was a Disneyland."

Away from the beach, along the streets with names that the board game
Monopoly made famous, the city's working class residents also thrived.
Although Atlantic City was built as tourist destination, generations of
Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants from Europe, and African-
Americans from the South, had come to find jobs. They created
tightly-knit neighborhoods filled with corner groceries, ethnic
restaurants, neighborhood taverns, and long rows of houses with porches
where families sat on summer evenings. It was a place where people
walked to work, to worship, to visit friends, and to shop. Like many
urban historians who lament the passing of the old "walking cities,"
Simon lauds the rich cultural and social life of these now vanished
neighborhoods.

In the Italian neighborhood known as Ducktown, Simon writes, "locals
could find three bakeries selling warm, crusty loaves Of Italian Bread."
"Next door were fruit stands and fish markets. Nearby grocery stores
sold milk and eggs, roasted peppers and imported Parmesan cheese.
Around the corner, sandwich makers built long Italian hoagies made out
of lettuce, tomatoes, onions, provolone, Genoa salami,...and hot red
peppers. Neighborhood tailors and barbers played scratchy opera records
and decorated their walls with pictures of the pope and Frank Sinatra.
Ducktown restaurants served big bowls of gnocchi with garlicky marinara
sauce and stubby glasses of homemade wine. Above the eateries and
stores were social clubs likes the Knights of Columbus and the Al-Ki
Club where men who spoke only Italian played nickel and dime games of
hearts."

But even during its golden era when this social fabric was intact, the
city was not without flaws. In order to make the boardwalk a fantasy
world for middle-class whites, Atlantic City was a Jim Crow town.
Police harassed African-Americans who tried to swim at the white beach.
Restaurants refused to serve black tourists or demanded exorbitant
prices from them. When black families tried to check into the famous
hotels, desk managers claimed their reservations had been lost. By
making black tourists feel unwelcome, businessmen and police made sure
the only African-Americans on the "boardwalk of dreams" were bellhops,
entertainers, cooks, and the men who pushed the wicker rickshaws in
which white tourists rode. Even the businesses along Atlantic Avenue
where year-round residents shopped were for whites only.
African-Americans patronized the stores on Arctic Avenue in the black
section of town.

It was no coincidence, Simon contends, that the decline in white middle
class tourism coincided with civil rights activists' successful efforts
to end Atlantic City's de facto segregation during the late 1950s and
1960s. Worried that Atlantic City was "now unmanageable and out of
control, the accountants and clerks who had in the past spent their
summers in town...went into hiding in segregated suburbs, malls, movie
theaters, amusement parks, and outdoor worlds." Many white year-round
residents left town as well.

"White flight" exacerbated other challenges the city faced. With the
advent of air conditioning, television, and backyard swimming pools,
fewer families flocked to the ocean each summer. Cheap airfares allowed
the middle class access to new, distant destinations. "As the white
tourists stayed away," Simon writes, "fancy Boardwalk jewelry stores
turned into hot dog stands." The boardwalk grew increasingly seedy and
soon the black middle class stayed away as well. Crowds still gathered
for the Miss America Pageant each September, and the Shriners still came
for conventions and salt-water taffy, but by the 1970s Atlantic City had
become synonymous with urban decay. It was hardly a place to go to
escape the cares of the world. "Without respectable, well-dressed
crowds," Simon maintains, "Atlantic City lost its ability to host
nightly reenactments of the American Dream of upward mobility, and when
that happened, the cycle of decline was on a vicious, unrelenting
course."

As the situation grew more desperate in the 1970s, city leaders
increasingly viewed casino gambling as a panacea. They had watched
enviously for decades as gaming transformed Las Vegas into a boomtown
and they were certain they could mimic that success. Vegas, after all,
was in the middle of the Nevada desert. Atlantic City was an ocean
front resort situated amidst millions of potential gamblers in New York,
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.

In 1976, New Jersey voters approved casino gambling in Atlantic City.
Confident that jobs and glittering prosperity were on the way, joyful
residents in the city's working class neighborhoods literally danced in
the streets. "Everyone," one local leader recalled, "was a millionaire
that night." Curtis Kugel, the owner of a venerable Atlantic City
seafood restaurant, spoke for many when he predicted that his town would
"turn around and be what it was in the twenties and thirties." The
"boardwalk of dreams" would be reborn.

When the first casino opened two years later, such hopes quickly faded.
Most of the jobs created by the casinos went to non-residents. Because
casino managers did not want employees competing with gamblers for
parking spaces, they built "intercept lots" outside of town and bused
employees from their cars to their jobs. As result, few workers "ever
stepped foot on Atlantic City streets" and "there was little chance for
any of the casino riches to trickle down into the city."

Restaurateurs and amusement pier operators who hoped to feed and
entertain giant crowds also found disappointment. It soon became
apparent that the new tourists seldom left the casinos. Gamblers lined
up at casino buffets instead. And casino architects fashioned their
buildings in a manner that made access to the boardwalk and beach
difficult. Casino patrons remained sealed in a windowless, clockless
maze of slot machines until their money ran out and tour operators
herded them back onto buses.

Atlantic City's ethnic neighborhoods also suffered. Speculators and
casino corporations bought houses in those districts, tore them down,
and built parking lots. During the early 1980s, bulldozers leveled one
third of the city's homes. Local efforts to resist such change proved
futile and residents who refused to sell found that their quality of
life quickly deteriorated. All of the city's movie theaters met the
wrecking ball. Buses rumbled down the streets at all hours. Crime rose
by eighty percent. Pawn shops replaced corner groceries. The last
vestiges of the "walking city" disappeared. Today, Simon laments, "the
old corner stores, friendly taverns, jazz clubs, Jewish delis, fresh
fruit stands, and butcher shops...are all gone." In their place, is a
"flat, desolate lunar landscape of streets increasingly empty except for
the luckless and dispossessed."

On the boardwalk, the old hotels and restaurants began to shut their
doors. Luigi's, Carl Kruger's restaurant that had once served a
thousand dinners a night to hungry vacationers, closed and made way for
a casino. The massive Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel, a faded masterpiece
of orientalist architecture, was torn down and replaced by a Bally's
casino "that looked like an unimaginative merging of a Day's Inn and a
K-Mart." Even Reese Palley, one of Atlantic City's most ardent gambling
proponents, eventually lamented the changes casinos had wrought. "We
were all innocents," he said later. "We didn't know what would happen...We
didn't have to sacrifice everything."

Although "Boardwalk of Dreams" paints a depressing portrait of present
day Atlantic City, Simon's love for the city and its history is clear.
Even in its halcyon days, he reminds us, the city had its share of
problems. But it was also a vibrant place and Simon masterfully
recreates this lost world full of music, whimsy, culture, and style.
Ultimately, however, his book is a powerful and cautionary tale about
the perils of an over reliance on tourism and of using "quick fixes,
like gambling, to solve deep and vexing economic and social problems."
Casinos, Simon concludes, have not made Atlantic City a better
community. The glory days have not returned. Instead, the "Queen of
resorts" is now "a stark, vacant, poor city with a beach, the Boardwalk,
and,...twelve separate, inward looking casinos...that leave only crumbs on
the Monopoly streets around them."

If you're searching for gripping non-fiction, look no further. "Boardwalk of Dreams" is almost as mesmerizing as a Caesars Palace slot machine.
History Professor Bryant Simon superbly links the fate of Atlantic City to what happened in other urban areas -- blight and flight that culminated in the 1960s. The recurring theme of exclusion in what are assumed to be "public" places is illuminating. Simon unveils a cross-section of pettiness, greed, and corruption close to the heart of the American dream that is sobering.
The author, a New Jersey native, leaves no stone unturned in bulldozing the myth of casino gambling as "magic bullet." The casinos didn't ruin Atlantic City but neither did they revive the city (which was, as Simon shows, predictable since casinos offer exclusion and isolation to relax their customers and keep them coming back).
Depressed areas and struggling industries should read and heed Simon. Horse-racing track operators currently have stars in their eyes about the "necessity" of "expanded gaming" the way many in Atlantic City did in 1976. (In fact -- a fact not mentioned in "Boardwalk of Dreams" -- Atlantic City slot machines supply the purse, or prize, money for races run at New Jersey's Monmouth Park and Meadowlands racetracks). Racing people, especially horsemen's associations, are on track to wake up with a big hangover some day.
The desegregation of Atlantic City and accompanying white exodus is well-documented by Simon. It's undoubtedly true but sad to contemplate just the same. The most recent similar example from history is what happened in South Africa after blacks got the right to vote in the 1990s. Pent-up demand for the blessings of liberty among blacks is unleashed. Some whites view this as unsettling and begin edging toward the door. Some blacks think things aren't moving fast enough and begin stealing etc. (thereby giving freedom a bad name). Whites fight back and/or move to safer ground. Terribly unfortunate and completely impervious to any legislative "solutions." One is left wishing for a divine "Patience" button (similar to the Staples Inc. "Easy" button) that could be pressed to prevent future chains of events along the lines of what happened to Atlantic City.

After just scanning this book, so many wonderful memories came flooding back to my mind. I can't wait to really dive in to the stories to really feel the full effect. From Vic's to Master's Bakery, stores on Newark Avenue and fishing in Fletcher lake -- it's a wonderful journey back in time. I heartily recommend this book for anyone who spent even one day at "Bagel Beach".

If you would like to travel back in time to "the good old days" when life was much simpler, and if you happen to be a Jersey guy or gal who would like to get lost in a good book, then Bette Blum's Bradley Beach Treasures is most definitely the one you want to curl up with.

Blum did a fabulous job putting together this collection of short stories from a bygone era. Each unique story took me (a Jersey girl myself) back to this time of innocence, where family values and lifelong friendships were the norm rather than the exception.

Along with each touching and memorable story she has also included nostalgic photos of the area in its heyday, as well as all sorts of pictures of Bradley Beach memorabilia. Bradley Beach Treasures was a true joy to read and kudos to Blum for a job well done.
Joyce Marie Taylor-Author and Poet

This Book tells a lot and shows a lot about my favoriate part of the Atlantic coast. Anyone who wants to know more about all that the southern coast of NJ has to offer should read thid fine book.There is no other place more beautiful in this world then traveling from Stone Harbor thru The Wildwoods and into Cape May. I have been visiting this part of the Country for over 40 years now and this fine book (if possible try to get it in hard back - but it may not come that way)can take you all over the Cape. I'm from Maryland and we have our own Ocean City but it can't hold a match to what a town like Wildwood has to offer. Get the book and visit a real vacation part of the Country that isn't only about booze,B-girls,bars,hippies,queers and Arabs!
"ENJOY" Joe Kopeck

This book provides a comprehensive background of Cape May County, New Jersey. It explains the development of the barrier islands, the Delaware Bay coast, and the inland areas of the county. It will enhance your Cape May experience as a vacationer or resident. Here at CapeMayBeach.com, we use this history to help us in our write-ups of the places on the Delaware Bay coast.

This is a great book for believers! Historical Cape May is made frightful. The tour is Eileen's Ghost Tour. I know because I work for her in Strasburg, PA for the Ghost Tour of Lancaster County. If you like this book, read the Pennsylvania Dutch one. It's excellent and that's where we get our stories from also!

After we went on Elaine's Haunted Mansion Tour, in Cape May, NJ, we got Cape May Ghost Stories. It's true, and believe me, all of this stuff is true, not made up fiction. We learned about Bridget, who is spending her afterlife in the Bed And Breakfast which was across the street from us. The writers/researchers are very good and if you enjoyed this too, there is Cape May Ghost Stories . . . Book Two!

Great photos, attention to detail with resolution and content is suberb. Cape May is beautiful and this calendar shows that beauty very clearly.

The Cape May Calendar of 2002 is a visual feast of Victorian Cape May, New Jersey. Architecture only seen in Cape May, New Jersey make this calendar a collector's "treasure" of a by-gone era.

The photographs are of the highest quailty and resolution. If you imagine the history of this Victorian resort town could ever be represented in print, then this calendar delivers! I could almost smell the sea breeze and hear the waves washing up on shore as I reviewed month after glorious month.

Finally, a true depiction of Cape May, New Jersey is caught on a medium that can often disappoint a buyer of artistic calendars. I anxiously await the 2003 calendar and the beauty it depicts of our nation's first "Resort."

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. As a long-time Collingswood native, it was a wonderful trip down memory lane to see so many historic photos of all my favorite places in town. Anyone who has a connection to Collingswood will find something to treasure here. Kudos to the author for a well-researched thorough presentation of this town's rich history.

As a former resident of Collingwood, NJ, I was extremely pleased to see this excellent pictorial history. The author has done an outstanding job of categorizing and explaining the priceless photos presented in this book. As we look to the future, the past tells an amazing story! A must have for anyone who has or had connection to this great South Jersey town.