front cover of Garbage in the Garden State
Garbage in the Garden State
Jordan P. Howell
Rutgers University Press, 2023
Garbage in the Garden State is the only book to examine the history of waste management in New Jersey. The state has played a pioneering role in the overall trajectory of waste management in the US. Howell's book is unique in the way that it places the contemporary challenges of waste management into their proper historical context – for instance, why does the system for recycling seem to work so poorly? Why do we have so many landfills in New Jersey, but also simultaneously not enough landfills or incinerators? 

Howell acknowledges that New Jersey is sometimes imagined, particularly by non-New Jerseyans, as a giant garbage dump for New York and Philadelphia. But every place has had to struggle with the challenges of waste management. New Jersey's trash history is in fact more interesting and more important than most. New Jersey’s waste history includes intensive planning, deep-seated political conflict, organized crime, and literally every level of state and federal judiciary. It is a colorful history, to say the least, and one that includes a number of firsts with regard to recycling, comprehensive planning, and the challenging economics of trash.
 
[more]

front cover of The George Washington Bridge
The George Washington Bridge
Poetry in Steel
Michael Aaron Rockland
Rutgers University Press, 2020

Since opening in 1931, the George Washington Bridge, linking New York and New Jersey, has become the busiest bridge in the world, with 103 million vehicles crossing it in 2016. Many people also consider it the most beautiful bridge in the world, yet remarkably little has been written about this majestic structure.

Intimate and engaging, this revised and expanded edition of Michael Rockland's rich narrative presents perspectives on the GWB, as it is often called, that span history, architecture, engineering, transportation, design, the arts, politics, and even post-9/11 mentalities. This new edition brings new insight since its initial publication in 2008, including a new chapter on the infamous “Bridgegate” Chris Christie-era scandal of 2013, when members of the governor's administration shut down access to the bridge, causing a major traffic jam and scandal and subsequently helping undermine Christie’s candidacy for the US presidency.

Stunning photos, from when the bridge was built in the late 1920s through the present, are a powerful complement to the bridge's history. Rockland covers the competition between the GWB and the Brooklyn Bridge that parallels the rivalry between New Jersey and New York City. Readers will learn about the Swiss immigrant Othmar Ammann, an unsung hero who designed and built the GWB, and how a lack of funding during the Depression dictated the iconic, uncovered steel beams of its towers, which we admire today. There are chapters discussing accidents on the bridge, such as an airplane crash landing in the westbound lanes and the sad story of suicides off its span; the appearance of the bridge in media and the arts; and Rockland's personal adventures on the bridge, including scaling its massive towers on a cable.

Movies, television shows, songs, novels, countless images, and even PlayStation 2 games have aided the GWB in becoming a part of the global popular culture. This tribute will captivate residents living in the shadow of the GWB, the millions who walk, jog, bike, skate, or drive across it, as well as tourists and those who will visit it someday.

.
[more]

logo for Georgetown University Press
George Washington's Final Battle
The Epic Struggle to Build a Capital City and a Nation
Georgetown University Press, 2020

George Washington is remembered for leading the Continental Army to victory, presiding over the Constitution, and forging a new nation, but few know the story of his involvement in the establishment of a capital city and how it nearly tore the United States apart.

In George Washington’s Final Battle, Robert P. Watson brings this tale to life, telling how the country's first president tirelessly advocated for a capital on the shores of the Potomac. Washington envisioned and had a direct role in planning many aspects of the city that would house the young republic. In doing so, he created a landmark that gave the fledgling democracy credibility, united a fractious country, and created a sense of American identity.

Although Washington died just months before the federal government's official relocation, his vision and influence live on in the city that bears his name.

This little-known story of founding intrigue throws George Washington’s political acumen into sharp relief and provides a historical lesson in leadership and consensus-building that remains relevant today. This book will fascinate anyone interested in the founding period, the American presidency, and the history of Washington, DC.

[more]

logo for Georgetown University Press
A Georgetown Life
The Reminiscences of Britannia Wellington Peter Kennon of Tudor Place
Georgetown University Press, 2020

An invaluable primary resource for understanding nineteenth-century America.

As a Georgetown resident for nearly a century, Britannia Wellington Peter Kennon (1815 – 1911) was close to the key political events of her time. Born into the prominent Peter family, Kennon came into contact with the many notable historical figures of the day who often visited Tudor Place, her home for over ninety years. Now published for the first time, the record of her experiences offers a unique insight into nineteenth-century American history.

Housed in the Tudor Place archives, "The Reminiscences of Britannia Wellington Peter Kennon" is a collection of Kennon’s memories solicited and recorded by her grandchildren in the 1890s. The text includes Kennon’s memories of her mother Martha Custis Peter and spending time at Mount Vernon with her grandparents George and Martha Washington. It also includes her recollections of childhood in Georgetown, life during the Civil War, the people enslaved at Tudor Place, and daily life in Washington, DC.

Edited by Grant Quertermous, this richly illustrated and annotated edition gives readers a greater appreciation of life in early Georgetown. It includes a guide to the city's streets then and now, a detailed family tree, and an appendix of the many people Britannia encountered—a who's who of the period. Readers will also find Britannia's narrative an essential companion to the incredible collection of objects preserved at Tudor Place. Notable for both its breadth and level of detail, A Georgetown Life brings a new dimension to the study of nineteenth-century America.

[more]

logo for Georgetown University Press
Georgetown's Second Founder
Fr. Giovanni Grassi's News on the Present Condition of the Republic of the United States of North America
Antonio Grassi
Georgetown University Press, 2023

Observations on the new American republic by an early president of Georgetown University

Father Giovanni Antonio Grassi was the ninth president of Georgetown University and pioneered its transition into a modern institution, earning him the moniker Georgetown’s Second Founder. Originally published in Italian in 1818 and translated here into English for the first time, his News on the Present Condition of the Republic of the United States of North America records his rich observations of life in the young republic and the Catholic experience within it.

When Grassi assumed his post as president in 1812, he found the university, known then as Georgetown College, to be in a “miserable state.” He immediately set out to enlarge and improve the institution, increasing the number of non-Catholics in the school, adding to the library’s holdings, and winning authority from Congress to confer degrees. Upon his return to Italy, Grassi published his News, which introduced Italians to the promise and contradictions of the American experiment in self-governance and offered perspectives on the social reality for Catholics in America.

This book is a fascinating work for historians of Catholicism and of the Jesuits in particular.

[more]

logo for Rutgers University Press
The Georgia of the North
Black Women and the Civil Rights Movement in New Jersey
Hettie V. Williams
Rutgers University Press, 2024
The Georgia of the North is a historical narrative about Black women and the long civil rights movement in New Jersey from the Great Migration to 1954. Specifically, the critical role played by Black women in forging interracial, cross-class, and cross-gender alliances at the local and national level and their role in securing the passage of progressive civil rights legislation in the Garden State is at the core of this book. This narrative is largely defined by a central question:  How and why did New Jersey’s Black leaders, community members, and women in particular, affect major civil rights legislation, legal equality, and integration a decade before the Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas decision? In this analysis, the history of the early Black freedom struggle in New Jersey is predicated on the argument that the Civil Rights Movement began in New Jersey, and that Black women were central actors in this struggle. 
[more]

front cover of A Gift of Belief
A Gift of Belief
Philanthropy and the Forging of Pittsburgh
Kathleen W. Buechel
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021

Philanthropy has long been associated with images of industrial titans and wealthy families. In Pittsburgh, long a center for industry, the shadows of Carnegie, Mellon, Frick, and others loom especially large, while the stories of working-class citizens who uplifted their neighbors remain untold. For the first time, these two portraits of Pittsburgh philanthropy converge in a rich historic tapestry. The Gift of Belief reveals how Pittsburghers from every strata, creed, and circumstance organized their private resources for the public good. The industrialists and their foundations are here but stand alongside lesser known philanthropists equally involved in institution building, civic reform, and community empowerment.

Beginning with sectarian philanthropy in the nineteenth century, moving to scientific philanthropy in the early twentieth century and Pittsburgh Renaissance-era institution-building, and concluding with modern entrepreneurship, twelve authors trace how Pittsburgh aligned with, led, or lagged behind the national philanthropic story and explore how ideals of charity and philanthropy entwined to produce distinctive forms of engagement that has defined Pittsburgh’s civic life.

[more]

front cover of Global Philadelphia
Global Philadelphia
Immigrant Communities Old and New
Edited by Ayumi Takenaka and Mary Johnson Osirim
Temple University Press, 2010

The racial and ethnic composition of Philadelphia continues to diversify as a new wave of immigrants—largely from Asia and Latin America—reshape the city’s demographic landscape. Moreover, in a globalized economy, immigration is the key to a city’s survival and competitiveness. The contributors to Global Philadelphia examine how Philadelphia has affected its immigrants’ lives, and how these immigrants, in turn, have shaped Philadelphia.

Providing a detailed historical, ethnographic, and sociological look at Philadelphia’s immigrant communities, this volume examines the social and economic dynamics of various ethnic populations. Significantly, the contributors make comparisons to and connections between the traditional immigrant groups—Germans, Italians, the Irish, Jews, Puerto Ricans, and Chinese—and newer arrivals, such as Cambodians, Haitians, Indians, Mexicans, and African immigrants of various nationalities.

While their experiences vary, Global Philadelphia focuses on some of the critical features that face all immigrant groups—intra-group diversity, the role of institutions, and ties to the homeland. Taken together, these essays provide a richer understanding of the processes and implications of contemporary immigration to the area.

[more]

front cover of God in Gotham
God in Gotham
The Miracle of Religion in Modern Manhattan
Jon Butler
Harvard University Press, 2020

A master historian traces the flourishing of organized religion in Manhattan between the 1880s and the 1960s, revealing how faith adapted and thrived in the supposed capital of American secularism.

In Gilded Age Manhattan, Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant leaders agonized over the fate of traditional religious practice amid chaotic and multiplying pluralism. Massive immigration, the anonymity of urban life, and modernity’s rationalism, bureaucratization, and professionalization seemingly eviscerated the sense of religious community.

Yet fears of religion’s demise were dramatically overblown. Jon Butler finds a spiritual hothouse in the supposed capital of American secularism. By the 1950s Manhattan was full of the sacred. Catholics, Jews, and Protestants peppered the borough with sanctuaries great and small. Manhattan became a center of religious publishing and broadcasting and was home to august spiritual reformers from Reinhold Niebuhr to Abraham Heschel, Dorothy Day, and Norman Vincent Peale. A host of white nontraditional groups met in midtown hotels, while black worshippers gathered in Harlem’s storefront churches. Though denied the ministry almost everywhere, women shaped the lived religion of congregations, founded missionary societies, and, in organizations such as the Zionist Hadassah, fused spirituality and political activism. And after 1945, when Manhattan’s young families rushed to New Jersey and Long Island’s booming suburbs, they recreated the religious institutions that had shaped their youth.

God in Gotham portrays a city where people of faith engaged modernity rather than foundered in it. Far from the world of “disenchantment” that sociologist Max Weber bemoaned, modern Manhattan actually birthed an urban spiritual landscape of unparalleled breadth, suggesting that modernity enabled rather than crippled religion in America well into the 1960s.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
God in Gotham
The Miracle of Religion in Modern Manhattan
Jon Butler
Harvard University Press

“Are you there, God? It’s me, Manhattan…Butler…argues that far from being a Sodom on the Hudson, New York was a center of religious dynamism throughout the 20th century.”
Wall Street Journal

“What a pleasure it is to take a tour of Manhattan’s sacred past led by one of the nation’s preeminent religious historians.”
Christianity Today

“A masterwork by a master historian…God in Gotham should be an instant classic.”
—Jonathan D. Sarna, author of American Judaism

In Gilded Age Manhattan, religious leaders agonized over the fate of traditional faith practice amid chaotic and sometimes terrifying change. Massive immigration, urban anonymity, and the bureaucratization of modern life tore at the binding fibers of religious community.

Yet fears of the demise of religion were dramatically overblown. Jon Butler finds a spiritual hothouse in the supposed capital of American secularism as Catholics, Jews, and Protestants peppered the borough with sanctuaries. A center of religious publishing and broadcasting, by the 1950s it was home to Reinhold Niebuhr, Abraham Heschel, Dorothy Day, and Norman Vincent Peale. While white spiritual seekers sometimes met in midtown hotels, black worshippers gathered in Harlem’s storefront churches. Though denied the ministry almost everywhere, women shaped congregations, founded missionary societies, and fused spirituality and political activism. God in Gotham portrays a city where people of faith embraced modernity and thrived.

[more]

front cover of GOVERNOR WILLIAM GLASSCOCK AND PROGRESSIVE POLITICS IN WEST VIRGINIA
GOVERNOR WILLIAM GLASSCOCK AND PROGRESSIVE POLITICS IN WEST VIRGINIA
Gary Jackson Tucker
West Virginia University Press, 2008

From 1909 to 1913, Governor William Glasscock served the state of West Virginia as an ardent progressive and reformer. In his inaugural address he proclaimed government "the machinery invoked and devised by man for his benefit and protection” and good government the guarantor of the happiness, prosperity, success, and welfare of the people. Governor William Glasscock and Progressive Politics in West Virginia recounts the life and work of West Virginia’s thirteenth governor. Born during the Civil War, Glasscock witnessed a country torn by sectional, fratricidal war become a powerful industrial nation by the turn of the twentieth century. Author Gary Jackson Tucker demonstrates how Glasscock, along with others during the Progressive Era, railed against large and powerful political and economic machines to enact legislation protecting free and fair elections, just taxation, regulation of public utilities, and workmen’s compensation laws. Never hesitating to use the power of the state to stand firm against racism and mob rule, and placing his own personal safety in jeopardy, Glasscock won the praise and admiration of average people. Glasscock’s four years in office took his own health and financial security from him, but left behind a better government—a good government—for the people of West Virginia.

[more]

front cover of The Governors of New Jersey
The Governors of New Jersey
Biographical Essays
Birkner, Michael J
Rutgers University Press, 2014

Rogues, aristocrats, and a future U.S. president. These and other governors are portrayed in this revised and updated edition of the classic reference work on the chief executives of New Jersey. Editors Michael J. Birkner, Donald Linky, and Peter Mickulas present new essays on the governors of the last three decades—Brendan T. Byrne, Thomas Kean, James Florio, Christine Todd Whitman, Donald DiFrancesco, James McGreevey, Richard Codey, and Jon Corzine. The essays included in the original edition are amended, edited, and corrected as necessary in light of new and relevant scholarship.

The authors of each governor’s life story represent a roster of such notable scholars as Larry Gerlach, Stanley Katz, Arthur Link, and Clement Price, as well as many other experts on New Jersey history and politics. As a result, this revised edition is a thorough and current reference work on the New Jersey governorship—one of the strongest in the nation.

Also of Interest:
New Jersey Politics and Government
The Suburbs Come of Age
Fourth Edition
Barbara G. Salmore with Stephen A. Salmore
978-0-8135-6139-4   paper   $34.95
A volume in the Rivergate Regionals Collection

Me, Governor?
My Life in the Rough-and-Tumble World of New Jersey Politics
Richard J. Codey
978-0-8135-5045-9   cloth   $24.95

The Life and Times of Richard J. Hughes
The Politics of Civility
John B. Wefing
978-0-8135-4641-4   cloth   $32.50

Governor Tom Kean
From the New Jersey Statehouse to the 911 Commission
Alvin S. Felzenberg
978-0-8135-3799-3   cloth   $29.95



[more]

front cover of Grand Forage 1778
Grand Forage 1778
The Battleground Around New York City
Todd W. Braisted
Westholme Publishing, 2016
The British Surprise Attack into New Jersey and New York to Support Their Planned Invasion of the Southern Colonies
After two years of defeats and reverses, 1778 had been a year of success for George Washington and the Continental Army. France had entered the war as the ally of the United States, the British had evacuated Philadelphia, and the redcoats had been fought to a standstill at the Battle of Monmouth. While the combined French-American effort to capture Newport was unsuccessful, it lead to intelligence from British-held New York that indicated a massive troop movement was imminent. British officers were selling their horses and laying in supplies for their men. Scores of empty naval transports were arriving in the city. British commissioners from London were offering peace, granting a redress of every grievance expressed in 1775. Spies repeatedly reported conversations of officers talking of leaving. To George Washington, and many others, it appeared the British would evacuate New York City, and the Revolutionary War might be nearing a successful conclusion. Then, on September 23, 1778, six thousand British troops erupted into neighboring Bergen County, New Jersey, followed the next day by three thousand others surging northward into Westchester County, New York. Washington now faced a British Army stronger than Burgoyne’s at Saratoga the previous year. What, in the face of all intelligence to the contrary, had changed with the British?
Through period letters, reports, newspapers, journals, pension applications, and other manuscripts from archives in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Germany, the complete picture of Britain’s last great push around New York City can now be told. The strategic situation of Britain’s tenuous hold in America is intermixed with the tactical views of the soldiers in the field and the local inhabitants, who only saw events through their narrow vantage points. This is the first publication to properly narrate the events of this period as one campaign. Grand Forage 1778: The Battleground Around New York City by historian Todd W. Braisted explores the battles, skirmishes, and maneuvers that left George Washington and Sir Henry Clinton playing a deadly game of chess in the lower Hudson Valley as a prelude to the British invasion of the Southern colonies.
[more]

front cover of The Great Disappearing Act
The Great Disappearing Act
Germans in New York City, 1880-1930
Christina A. Ziegler-McPherson
Rutgers University Press, 2022
Where did all the Germans go? How does a community of several hundred thousand people become invisible within a generation?

This study examines these questions in relation to the German immigrant community in New York City between 1880-1930, and seeks to understand how German-American New Yorkers assimilated into the larger American society in the early twentieth century.
By the turn of the twentieth century, New York City was one of the largest German-speaking cities in the world and was home to the largest German community in the United States. This community was socio-economically diverse and increasingly geographically dispersed, as upwardly mobile second and third generation German Americans began moving out of the Lower East Side, the location of America’s first Kleindeutschland (Little Germany), uptown to Yorkville and other neighborhoods. New York’s German American community was already in transition, geographically, socio-economically, and culturally, when the anti-German/One Hundred Percent Americanism of World War I erupted in 1917.

This book examines the structure of New York City’s German community in terms of its maturity, geographic dispersal from the Lower East Side to other neighborhoods, and its ultimate assimilation to the point of invisibility in the 1920s. It argues that when confronted with the anti-German feelings of World War I, German immigrants and German Americans hid their culture – especially their language and their institutions – behind closed doors and sought to make themselves invisible while still existing as a German community.
But becoming invisible did not mean being absorbed into an Anglo-American English-speaking culture and society. Instead, German Americans adopted visible behaviors of a new, more pluralistic American culture that they themselves had helped to create, although by no means dominated. Just as the meaning of “German” changed in this period, so did the meaning of “American” change as well, due to nearly 100 years of German immigration.
 
[more]

front cover of The Great Kanawha Navigation
The Great Kanawha Navigation
Emory L. Kemp
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000

The vision of a central waterway connecting tidewater Virginia with the Ohio River to rival the Erie Canal persisted for decades during the 19th century. The idea was at first fostered by the commonwealth of Virginia and then reincarnated as the Central Water Line, which was endorsed by the federal government. It was a grand vision, and though never implemented, the Great Kanawha Navigation nevertheless became a highly successful regionally controlled waterway that developed the rich resources of the Kanawha Valley. Emory Kemp has compiled a comprehensive history of navigation on the Great Kanawha River, detailing the industrial archaeology of this waterway from the early 19th century, and offering a detailed case study of a major 19th- and early 20th-century civil engineering project that would significantly advance the nation's industrial development.

Using the early unsuccessful attempts to connect the James River and western waters as a background, The Great Kanawha Navigation emphasizes technological innovation and construction of navigational structures on the river. With the river men championing open navigation during favorable stages of the river, and at the same time clamoring for controls to ensure navigation during periods of low flow, the Corps of Engineers responded with the concept of the movable dam to provide a cost-effective means of moving bulk cargo, especially coal, salt, lumber, cement, and chemicals, along nearly 100 miles of the Great Kanawha River. The Great Kanawha Navigation employed a series of ten locks and dams and became a laboratory for the use of movable dams in the United States, using first the French Chanoine shutter wicket dam and then the German Roller Gate dam. The innovative technology of the ten dams, the volume of freight carried and the management of the system by the Corps of Engineers made this one of the most significant public works in the nation. Each of the two systems provided cost-effective and environmentally sound means to tap the rich mineral resources of the Kanawha Valley. By any measure, the Great Kanawha Navigation has been one of the more successful ventures of the Corps of Engineers; Kemp has provided extensive photographs, illustrations, diagrams, and maps to further emphasize the construction of the various hydraulic structures. The result is an interesting and significant blend of biographical, technical, political, geographical, and industrial history that will delight historians of technology and the region.

[more]

front cover of A Guide to the Great Gardens of the Philadelphia Region
A Guide to the Great Gardens of the Philadelphia Region
Adam Levine
Temple University Press, 2007
Finally, for every resident and visitor to the region, a comprehensive guide to the gardens of eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and northern Delaware.  Magnificently illustrated with nearly 200 full color photographs, A GUIDE TO THE GREAT GARDENS OF THE PHILADELPHIA REGION provides essential information on how to locate and enjoy the finest gardens the area has to offer.

As the horticultural epicenter of the United States, Philadelphia and the surrounding towns, suburbs, and countryside are blessed with more public gardens in a concentrated area than almost any other region in the world.  Stretching from Trenton, New Jersey  through Philadelphia and down to Newark, Delaware, this area (often called the Delaware Valley) offers more horticultural riches than a visitor can possibly see even in a coupl of weeks of hectic garden-hopping.

In A GUIDE TO THE GREAT GARDENS OF THE PHILADELPHIA REGION  you will find:

Detailed coverage of almost 100 gardens

Maps to indicate where area gardens are in relation to each other to plan day trip itineraries

Key information about each major garden, including hours, fees, time needed for a tour, history, acreage, and special features

Over a dozen gardens that have never before been featured in any garden guidebook

Arranged by interest, to help guide readers to gardens that will most meet their needs

Notations about historical houses, cafes/restaurants, gift shops, and chidren's features at each major garden
[more]

logo for University of Pittsburgh Press
A Guidebook To Historic Western Pennsylvania
Revised Edition
Helene Smith
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991

Since its first publication in 1976, this guide -  with nearly thirty thousand copies sold - has become the standard book for exploring the twenty-six counties of western Pennsylvania.  Yet in the past fourteen years, many sites have been lost through fire, demolition, or neglect - and many other sites of historical interest have been discovered and documented.  Now Helene Smith and George Swetnam have completely revised the text, updating the capsule histories, the site descriptions, and location directions (including all the new Pennsylvania road numbers), and adding several hundred new entries.

[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter