New Jersey Books

Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II

Robert Kurson

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Total reviews: 287 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the tradition of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm comes a true tale of riveting adventure in which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve a great historical mystery–and make history themselves.

For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was more than a sport. Testing themselves against treacherous currents, braving depths that induced hallucinatory effects, navigating through wreckage as perilous as a minefield, they pushed themselves to their limits and beyond, brushing against death more than once in the rusting hulks of sunken ships.
But in the fall of 1991, not even these courageous divers were prepared for what they found 230 feet below the surface, in the frigid Atlantic waters sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey: a World War II German U-boat, its ruined interior a macabre wasteland of twisted metal, tangled wires, and human bones–all buried under decades of accumulated sediment.
No identifying marks were visible on the submarine or the few artifacts brought to the surface. No historian, expert, or government had a clue as to which U-boat the men had found. In fact, the official records all agreed that there simply could not be a sunken U-boat and crew at that location.

Over the next six years, an elite team of divers embarked on a quest to solve the mystery. Some of them would not live to see its end. Chatterton and Kohler, at first bitter rivals, would be drawn into a friendship that deepened to an almost mystical sense of brotherhood with each other and with the drowned U-boat sailors–former enemies of their country. As the men’s marriages frayed under the pressure of a shared obsession, their dives grew more daring, and each realized that he was hunting more than the identities of a lost U-boat and its nameless crew.

Author Robert Kurson’s account of this quest is at once thrilling and emotionally complex, and it is written with a vivid sense of what divers actually experience when they meet the dangers of the ocean’s underworld. The story of Shadow Divers often seems too amazing to be true, but it all happened, two hundred thirty feet down, in the deep blue sea.


From the Hardcover edition.

The Soprano State: New Jersey's Culture of Corruption

Bob Ingle, Sandy McClure

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Soprano State details the you-couldn't-make-this-up true story of the corruption that has pervaded New Jersey politics, government, and business for the past thirty years. From Jimmy Hoffa purportedly being buried somewhere beneath the end zone in Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands, through allegations of a thoroughly corrupt medical and dental university, through Mafia influence at all levels, to a governor who suddenly declares himself a “gay American” and resigns, the Garden State might indeed be better named after the HBO mobsters.

Where else would:

- A state attorney general show up after police pulled over her boyfriend who was driving without a valid license?

- A state senator and mayor of Newark (the same guy) spend thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money on a junket to Rio days before leaving office?

- A politically connected developer hire a prostitute to tape sex acts with his own brother-in-law and then send the tape to his sister?

Only in the Soprano State.

Weird N.J., Vol. 2: Your Travel Guide to New Jersey's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets

Mark Moran, Mark Sceurman

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

New Jersey is even WEIRDER than we thought!
From the authors of Weird N.J.—with more than 125,000 copies sold—comes a second amazing collection of the wonderful weirdness that fills every inch of the Garden State.

One of the bestselling books ever to hit New Jersey was Mark Sceurman and Mark Moran’s Weird N.J. The book was such a phenomenon that it began a whole series of Weird state books, each one a bestseller. But the Marks, as they are called, always knew that there were more, bizarre stories lurking in their own home state. So back they went, camera and notebook in hand, to travel the highways and byways of New Jersey to chronicle more weirdly bizarre stories. And what did they find? How about the pathway of a doctor’s office paved with tombstones? Or a pumpkin-shaped house? Then there’s the Hub Cap Tree, the Birdsville Church (yes, a church for birds), and the bowling ball pyramid that graces one proud resident’s front lawn. Fun too are the haunted houses to visit, the ghosts to chat with, and the cursed roads to travel down. It’s all part of the long, strange trip known as Weird N.J.

Woodrow Wilson: Princeton to the Presidency

W. Barksdale Maynard

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Before Woodrow Wilson became president of the United States, he spent 25 years at Princeton University, first as an undergraduate, then professor, and finally as president. His experiences at the helm of Princeton—where he enjoyed four productive years followed by four years of wrangling and intense acrimony—reveal much about the kind of man he was and how he earned a reputation as a fearless crusader. This engrossing book focuses on how Wilson’s Princeton years influenced the ideas and worldview he later applied in politics. His career in the White House, W. Barksdale Maynard shows, repeated with uncanny precision his Princeton experiences.

The book recounts how Wilson’s inspired period of building, expansion, and intellectual fervor at Princeton deteriorated into one of the most famous academic disputes in American history. His battle to abolish elitist eating clubs and establish a more egalitarian system culminated in his defeat and dismissal, and the ruthlessness of his tactics alienated even longtime friends. So extreme was his behavior, some historians have wondered whether he suffered a stroke. Maynard sheds new light on this question, on Wilson’s temper, and on other aspects of his strengths and shortcomings. The book provides an unprecedented inside view of a hard-fighting president—a man who tried first to remake a university and then to remake the world.

Shadow Divers Exposed: the Real Saga of the U-869

Gary Gentile

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Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The U-869 was one of more than 1,200 U-boats that were constructed for the Nazi war machine. It was sunk off the American eastern seaboard by a combination hedgehog and depth-charge attack. There were no survivors to tell the tragic tale. Now, for the first time, the real saga of the U-869 can be told in full. Archival documents have established that the U-boat was sunk by two American destroyer escorts. Seven crewmembers of those aggressive warships have supplemented the official record with their personal recollections. Shadow Divers Exposed works on a multitude of levels. It presents the actual circumstances that surrounded the loss of the U-869. It puts the discovery of the U-869 into perspective with other U-boats that have been found in American waters. It provides an overview of the U-boat war through accounts of other U-boat losses. And it corrects some of the gross errors, wild exaggerations, and deliberate distortions that filled the pages of Shadow Divers. The author interviewed a number of witnesses whose testimony contradicted the theatrical plot and boastful embellishments that formed the essential ingredients of Shadow Divers. Some of these witnesses actually performed the deeds for which the chosen protagonists of Shadow Divers were given credit. These witnesses disputed many of the fictitious elements that ran rampant through the pages of Shadow Divers. By means of forensic analyses of shipwreck collapse, torpedo mechanics, and U-boat survivors' accounts, the present volume explains why the U-869 could not have been sunk by a circular run of its own torpedo - as Shadow Divers had its uninformed readers believe.

The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family

Laura Schenone

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Can a recipe change your life? A quest for an authentic dish reveals a mythic love story and age-old culinary secrets.

James Beard Award-winning author Laura Schenone undertakes a quest to retrieve her great grandmother's ravioli recipe, reuniting with relatives as she goes. In lyrical prose and delicious recipes, Schenone takes the reader on an unforgettable journey from the grit of New Jersey's industrial wastelands and the fast-paced disposable culture of its suburbs to the dramatically beautiful coast of Liguria—the family's homeland—with its pesto, smoked chestnuts, torte, and, most beloved of all, ravioli, the food of celebration and happiness. Schenone discovers the persistent importance of place, while offering a perceptive voice on immigration and ethnicity in its twilight. Along the way, she gives us the comedies and foibles of family life, a story of love and loss, a deeper understanding of the bonds between parents and children, and the mysteries of pasta, rolled into a perfect circle of gossamer dough. 90 illustrations.

Atlantic City Then and Now (Then & Now Thunder Bay)

Edward Arthur Mauger

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Editorial Review:

Welcome to Atlantic City, New Jersey, the birthplace of many pop culture phenomena, including Monopoly, the Miss America Pageant, salt-water taffy and The Donald (Trump, that is). Discover the extraordinary history of this glamorous resort town in Atlantic City Then and Now, a new title in the top-selling Then and Now series.

• Fascinating then-and-now photographs highlight Atlantic City’s evolution-from its early days as a get-away for Philadelphians, through its decline in the mid-20th century, to its 21st-century incarnation as a gambling and entertainment mecca.
• Stroll along the city’s famous Boardwalk! First built in 1870 to keep sand off hotel carpets, the Boardwalk has witnessed tremendous changes.
• Check in to some of the Eastern Seaboard’s most extravagant turn-of-the-century hotels like the Traymore, the Marlborough-Blenheim, and the Shelburne.
• See how Donald Trump turned swampland into gold, with photographs of the once impoverished Inlet area that now boasts high-end resorts.
• Take a spin on the world’s first Ferris wheel, at Missouri and Mississippi Avenues, now the site of the Trump Taj Mahal casino.
• Glimpse icons of the past, like Boardwalk Hall, home of the Miss America Pageant and the Chesterfield sign, once the world’s largest electric sign with 27,000 light bulbs.

Iron Rails in the Garden State: Tales of New Jersey Railroading (Railroads Past and Present)

Anthony J. Bianculli

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Editorial Review:

"Iron Rails in the Garden State" is a sampler of unique and fascinating stories about railroading in New Jersey, culled from archives and independent research. It is a collection of historical vignettes, and because it is not tied to a particular time or railroad line, Anthony J. Bianculli is free to move from one story to another, entertaining the reader with anecdotes of New Jersey railroad pioneers, sacred sites, and expensive mistakes. Included in this book are tales from railroad literature that have yet to be told at length until now.

Black Dog of Fate: An American Son Uncovers His Armenian Past

Peter Balakian

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 49 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

"Black Dogof Fate" Is a Fuzzy Grey Beast at Best 4 out of 5 stars.
9 of 20 people found this review helpful.

Peter Balakian's book, "Black Dog of Fate," tries to be too many things
and sadly fails at many of them. In essence, it is an attempt to tell a
sort of Armenian-American story which I find not overly interesting or
compelling. I wish the author had done a bit more in-depth work to learn
about his people and their rich heritage before embarking to represent it
or explain it or share it with non-Armenians, for he has much more to absorb
and understand himself first. I find the Armenianness in this book to be
tentative, unengaged and unconvincing. Pity, since the author seems to
have a lot of passion in his pursuit of other aspects of his life such as
football, the Yankees, modern poetry, and exposing Turkish attempts to
buy (among others) Princeton professors to act as mouthpieces giving
legitimacy to their vile historical revisionism, practiced by the
"modern" Turkish state and its organs.

It seems to be all the rage these days to elevate personal histories and
family testimonials into the realm of fiction and novels. The "I" and "we"
and "us" occupy center stage and the reader is invited to enjoy the
intimacy that must surely be in place via this artifice. But is it realy?
Since in order to make this legitimate, the writer must distance himself,
at least initially, from all this old world exotica, and like the reader,
question their validity or relevance in present day North American
society. What are all these old world, old fashioned ghosts and traditions?,
is the first cry of writer and reader alike, only, ofcourse, to be followed
by a sharp bank turn where the writer steers the satisfied and in-place
reader towards the opposite viewpoint wherein *this* culture and *this*
lifestyle become suspect in light of some tentative spotting of cultural
wealth that has been traded in or abandoned in order to swim swiftly towards
materialistic, memory-free, self-redefining, "comfort" seeking and buying
mores.

In the Balakian tale, one encounters suburbia instead of substance,
worldly goods acquisition instead of deep roots that steady the soul,
immediate family and relatives running away from their true identities either
towards surrealism, the abstract and unemotional, or else towards medicine,
respectability and detachment. Young Balakian observes but never
understands "the grandmother" for she is shielded culturally from being
able to reach him by her very offsprings who can not and will not instill
the Armenian identity he will eventually seek but never quite find. Their
crime is self-denial and a march to the tune of America's mixmaster
piper. "Be unlike your past and your future will be brighter," seems to be
what America promises, at the very least. The intermediate generation listens
and adopts this credo and Peter is left to find out but never quite
understand just what cost his ancestors have paid to remain Armenian and
to preserve our culture before the final denials on New Jersey pateos while
enjoying, as if to serve sweet irony, full course Armenian meals and the
mixing aromas of delicacies from the old country every Sunday.

Peter is lost alright, but as the book sadly shows, he remains lost.
Paraphrasing or quoting Ambassador Morgenthau does not an Armenian genocide
expert make. Personal family testimonials of the Turkish atrocities does
not a genocide history make (For that, read Vahakn Dadrian's "The History
of the Armenian Genocide" Berghahn Books, 1995). Episodic accounts can be
dismissed by the Turks as hear-say and as mere isolated incidents, leading
to more harm than good (for if better evidence existed, the arguement
goes, why would anyone resort to such flimsy fare?). For the story to have
worked, for the story to have *really* worked, as I would have liked it to,
Balakian's life and lifestyle would have had to have changed
significantly and his child rearing practices would have had to reflect
it, and his relationship with his wife who, like him, is not leading a strongly
Armenian existence, would have had to have changed, solidifying his roots,
celebrating his new found identity, and nurturing the metamorphosis by
sustained community involvment and grass roots movement participation
which, alas, never appear on the pages of this book. How else to explain
the lack of a turning around of the tide of assimilation to which Balakian
is a grand personal witness, except that the transition has not occured?
The ship of Armenianness sails by Balakian. He is finally aware enough to
be able to identify the ship and wave it goodbye and write about it, but
not resolved enough to climb aboard. That is how the book fails and that is
how his story fails. This is a story of assimilation and loss with a bit of
mid stream self awareness thrown in. For a real story of an Armenian
finding his roots and letting them take root in his own life and future,
read Mark Arax's book, "In my Father's Name (Simon & Schuster, 1996),"
where the transition is real and the early youth of disaffection is
replaced by a profound adoption of our essence revealed in exquisite
frankness and power by Mark Arax. One can only hope that Balakian's
partial reorientation towards our culture and traditions and essence will
somehow continue and that some day he will wish to live with a more meaningful
attachment to our cause and needs than merely as an able observer (not
withstanding his laudible actions as an April 24th -- Armenian genocide
commemoration speaker and an exposer of Turkish infiltration in the US
academic arena by buying spokesmen turned professors who mascarade as
unbiased researchers). This criticism I direct to the predecessor of this
genre of American Armenian writing first and to Balakian second. I speak
here of "passage to Ararat" by Michael Arlen (Hungry Mind republication,
1996) where a disinterested soit-disant Armenian goes to Armenia in the
70's and by the end of the short trip is somewhat more closely touched by
this strange people's woes and dreams. Too little, too late, and always
detached, is all I can say to these meagre displays of ethnic or cultural
reorientation. Much more needs to be absorbed before the essence is
transmitted to future generations to take and behold.

However, I remain hopeful that future transformatory stories and ethnic
identity survival stories *will be* written which will show that the tide
of assimilation and cultural abandonment are not the only outcome of this
experiment of transplanting peoples and cultures to this continent we
proudly call our home.

Editorial Review:

The author of four volumes of verse, Peter Balakian writes with the precision of a poet and the lyricism of a privileged suburban child in 1950s New Jersey. He is shadowed by his relatives' carefully guarded memories of past trauma: the brutal Turkish extermination in 1915 of more than a million Armenians, including most of his maternal grandmother's family. Balakian seamlessly interweaves personal and historical material to depict one young man's reclamation of his heritage and to scathingly indict the political forces that conspired to sweep under the rug the 20th century's first genocide.

Doo Wop Motels: Architectural Treasures of the Wildwoods

Kirk Hastings

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Wild About This Book 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

You don't have to know Wildwood to love this book, but when you finish it
you'll want to go. Hastings does more than write about the history and
architecture of this unique place, he brings its heart and soul alive. This
wonderfully kitschy resort has a fanatically loyal following - people come back
year after year for decades, staying in places built in the 50's and 60's
with names like the Astronaut,the Kona Kai,the Bonanza, the Ebb Tide,
the Singapore or the Tahiti. Just driving down the street was a lesson in
pop culture. DOO WOP MOTELS is fun, informative and obviously written
by someone who loves Wildwood. Unfortunately it's also one of the only
places to see these architectual treasures, since many have been
torn down in recent years in the name of "progress." The photographs of the
motels are beautiful...you'll feel like you're there sipping a drink
under a plastic palm, the "official" tree of the Wildwoods.

Editorial Review:

The three New Jersey beach resorts known collectively as The Wildwoods have recently been the subject of widespread notice for their unique concentration of mid-century commercial architecture. Known in The Wildwoods as Doo Wop, the style is mostly represented in the resorts' surviving motels, built between 1955 and 1970, and comes in a variety of forms, such as Modern with jet-age glass walls, Vroom! with thrusting pointed features, and Polynesian Pop with thatched roofs and tiki torches. This fun, colourful book recounts the stories of the motels, describes their special features - from the ubiquitous plastic palm trees to the glorious neon signs that identify them - and covers the recent Neo-Doo Wop buildings that have arisen in the wake of Doo Wop preservation.