Mark Di Ionno is a Jersey guy through and through. He’s lived in fifteen different towns in six different New Jersey counties. He’s been a journalist for the state’s top newspapers, currently the Star-Ledger, where his first job was to go out and write about things that were “interesting.” Who better to take readers on a personal tour of the backroads of New Jersey?
In Backroads, New Jersey, Di Ionno leads readers off the congested interstates with their commonplace scenery to the seldom-explored secondary roads, where the real life of the state can be found. These inter-county or 500 series roads are a 6,788-mile network of mostly one-lane highways. Marked by blue-and-yellow five-sided shields bearing county names, they make up more than 20 percent of New Jersey’s public roads. They are never the fastest or most direct way to get anywhere, but when you break out of the towns and hit the country, they are a pleasure to drive.
Travel with Di Ionno as he takes readers to see the state’s amazing beauty¾from the dizzying cliffs of the Palisades, to the blunted peaks of the Highlands and Kittatinny Ridges, to the rolling hills of Morris, Hunterdon, and Somerset counties, to the topsoil-wealthy agricultural belts of Monmouth and the southern counties, to the flat, sandy beaches of the 127-mile Jersey Shore. Travel with him as he shows us the homes of New Jersey’s culturally diverse population, whose men and women work at everything from farms to pharmacies, from banks to auto assembly lines. And travel with him as he recounts the history made along the back country roads in towns like Rocky Hill, where George Washington wrote his farewell orders. Di Ionno calls New Jersey “a place of infinite natural beauty, a place of intricate human patterns. A place where you can see a lot in a little time. This is, simply put, the overriding theme of this book. New Jersey is a restless state for restless people. A state for wanderers to explore.” Backroads, New Jersey is a rare chance to see it all through the eyes of a well-traveled Jerseyan. Happy wandering!
Few events in American history can match the triumph and tragedy of the Civil War. Many books have been written about the War between the States, but until now, none has chronicled—in their own words—the many important roles played by people from New Jersey.
Beneath the Starry Flag is a collection of richly detailed eyewitness accounts by New Jerseyans who lived during the Civil War. Drawing from letters, journals, regimental histories, and newspaper accounts, Alan A. Siegel places the reader in the midst of these desperate times. The book depicts the war years chronologically, from the tense days when one state, then another seceded from the Union, through battles lost and won, to the victory at Appomattox and Lincoln’s funeral procession across New Jersey.
Readers will learn of the remarkable valor of New Jersey soldiers such as John Beech, a Trenton potter who won a Medal of Honor for bravery at Spotsylvania’s Bloody Angle. They will learn too of the sacrifices made by civilians, such as Cornelia Hancock of Salem County, who ministered to soldiers wounded on battlefields from Gettysburg to Petersburg. Siegel also tells of other people and institutions who played very different roles in the war, including Somerset County’s Daniel Cory, who said he would shoot the president if he could, the state’s leading Copperhead newspapers, which denounced the draft and discouraged enlistments, and the State Legislature, which at one point called for a truce and negotiations to end the conflict.
Siegel allows them all, enlisted men and officers, politicians and plain citizens, patriots and conspirators, to speak in their own words in often moving firsthand accounts. Their motives, emotions, and deeds are chronicled in this collection of stories, some which have been out of print for many years, others that have not been heard since they were first written more than a century ago.
[Beneath the Starry Flag is an invaluable addition to what we know about this remarkable time in American history, perfect for the general reader or Civil War historian.]
Richard P. McCormick has chronicled the black student protest movement at Rutgers University, from the 1960s to today. He examines the forces that produced the protest movement, the tactics that were employed, and the qualified gains that were achieved. He tells us about demonstrations, building occupations, committee hearings, and countless meetings, but he also paints portraits of the many student leaders who mobilized protest. This is the story of a lot of pain, some blunders, and some successes.
In the mid-sixties, the University established committees to recruit black students and to add more blacks to the faculty. These efforts produced only modest results. By 1968, there were still not enough black students on campus, but there were enough to create a political presence for the first time. They were committed to acting against the racism they perceived within the University. To respond to their protests, in March 1969 the Board of Governors passed a dramatically new and controversial policy to encourage disadvantaged students who lived in Camden, Newark, and New Brunswick to apply to Rutgers, where they would take college-preparatory classes as unmatriculated students, and then enter Rutgers as matriculated students. This program, never very successful, lasted only two years.
Unrest did not end with the sixties. During the seventies, black students sporadically voiced protests against what they perceived to be an unsupportive environment. During the eighties, black enrollment actually declined, as did the black graduation rate. In conclusion, McCormick points to the effort that has been made but even more to the effort that still needs to be made and the social cost of ignoring the problem.
Could that weed you just pulled have provided a cure for cancer? Scientists have warned that the destruction of the world’s rain forests may mean that plant species are being lost before we recognize their potential as sources of new medicines. This is equally true for the plants much closer to home. New Jersey, while heavily industrialized and densely populated, is extraordinarily rich in plant resources. Botany and Healing: Medicinal Plants of New Jersey and the Region describes nearly 500 species of plants found in the Garden State and in nearby areas that have been used medicinally.
Cecil Still lists plants by family and, within each family, by genus and species, to underscore the close relationships among medicinally valuable species. This arrangement is familiar to every botanist and easy for the amateur naturalist and herbalist to use as well. For each entry, Still discusses both the natural history and the historical and modern medicinal uses of the plant: scientific and common names, description, habitat, geographic range, and preparations and applications in Native American, European, African, and Asian herbal traditions. Most species are illustrated with Still’s line drawings. The book also contains a helpful index (with cross references by usage, common or scientific name), a glossary of terms, and a list of resources for further reading.
Botany and Healing explains the history and present status of the uses of herbal medicines, explains what makes a plant medicinal (or poisonous), how herbal medicines are prepared for use, and why they should be used only with great caution.
Butterfly watching has begun to gain the popularity that bird watching has enjoyed for half a century. Much as birds served as a flagship of the conservation movement in this country, butterflies are coming to be seen as the rallying point for the protection of invertebrate species--now regarded as increasingly important for the well-being of all members of the ecosystem.
Butterflies of New Jersey discusses the behavior, status, distribution, taxonomy, ecology, and conservation of butterflies in New Jersey. It is an innovative companion and complement to any butterfly identification guide of the Northeast. It pays particular attention to the place of butterflies in the ecosystem of New Jersey and neighboring regions and their relationships to other butterflies around the world. Its detailed species accounts of 140-plus kinds of butterflies found in the state and neighboring regions (out of 700 North American species) alert butterfly watchers to changes in populations over time. Where other butterfly guides typically include a section on collecting butterflies, this one includes a detailed chapter on protecting them by creating butterfly gardens and preventing habitat destruction.
Butterflies of New Jersey is indispensable for everyone interested in the butterflies and natural history of the Garden State and its neighbor.
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