edited by Raechel Lutz
contributions by Aris Damadian Lindemans, Tina Peabody, Zachary Rouhas, Christopher J. Slaby, Andrew Urban, Chris Slaby, Christine Woodside, Sevin Yildiz, Melissa Ziobro, Chad Anderson, Raechel Lutz, Erin Becker-Boris, Michael Chiarappa, Dan Druckenbrod, James J. Gigantino II, Robert Hoberman, Jordan P. Howell and Charlotte Leib
foreword by Neil M. Maher
Rutgers University Press, 2026
Cloth: 978-1-9788-3643-3 | Paper: 978-1-9788-3642-6 | eISBN: 978-1-9788-3644-0 (ePub) | eISBN: 978-1-9788-3645-7 (PDF)

ABOUT THIS BOOK | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
New Jersey’s Natures takes up the challenge of expanding academic and popular conceptions of New Jersey and its landscapes through the lens of environmental history. Scholars’ essays showcase the ways in which nature is integral to understandings of the state and its past as well as its future. These essays show that New Jersey should no longer solely be known as a place where pollution and suburbanization run amok, but rather a place where history happens.

The contributors investigate how nature and history are intertwined within this small but mighty state, covering topics from the colonial period to the present across North, South, and Central Jersey. They investigate natural features like the Delaware River and Bay, the Pinelands, and the unforgettable Jersey Shore. In this book you will find: indigenous Americans making meaning as settlers threaten their ways of life, Governor William Livingston considering Central Jersey’s features as he fights in the American Revolution, farmers building the state’s industrial agriculture, a foreign diplomat planting an arboretum, squatters in the swampy Meadowlands subverting social and economic norms, activists fighting for parks, forests, and beaches across two centuries, and much more.