Here are 88 books that New Jersey and the Rebellion fans have personally recommended if you like
New Jersey and the Rebellion.
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I grew up in New Jersey and my paternal ancestors have lived here since 1732. My ancestors served in the Civil War, my father served in World War II and I also served in the military. From an early age, I wanted to be a writer, and that ambition, as well as my experience as an army officer in the Vietnam War, provided the sparks that ignited my writing career.
John Cunningham Was a journalist who became a historian -- and a great one. The World War II veteran and Newark Evening News columnist wrote innumerable books about his native state, and they were all great. Perhaps his most significant contribution to the state’s story was This is New Jersey, a classic which has remained in print since its initial publication in 1953.
I grew up in New Jersey and my paternal ancestors have lived here since 1732. My ancestors served in the Civil War, my father served in World War II and I also served in the military. From an early age, I wanted to be a writer, and that ambition, as well as my experience as an army officer in the Vietnam War, provided the sparks that ignited my writing career.
Folklore is not history, nor is history folklore, but they often intersect. Henry Charlton Beck, a journalist who became an Episcopal priest and who wrote a series of New Jersey folklife classics, began his career with this volume, stories of abandoned iron forges, villages, and forgotten legends in the state’s iconic Pinelands. Rutgers University Press reprinted Beck’s books, beginning with this book in 1961.
Composed, for the most part, from sketches that were published in the Courier-Post newspapers of Camden, New Jersey, Beck provides us with a series of stories of towns too tiny or uncertain for today's maps. Together, these sketches help to create a more complete picture of the history of New Jersey. A connecting skein of untold or little known wartime history--the Revolution, the War of 1812, and the conflict of North against South--runs through most of the sketches. Many of the sketches concern the pine towns and their people, ""the pineys"" who lived in the Jersey pine barrens.
I grew up in New Jersey and my paternal ancestors have lived here since 1732. My ancestors served in the Civil War, my father served in World War II and I also served in the military. From an early age, I wanted to be a writer, and that ambition, as well as my experience as an army officer in the Vietnam War, provided the sparks that ignited my writing career.
Most people were drawn to this work because of the HBO television series of the same name. While there was, to be kind, a great deal of exaggeration in the series, Johnson’s thorough research for the book provides an accurate and fascinating account of the history of Atlantic City and its legendary political boss Enoch “Nucky” Johnson.
"When I was first approached by HBO to use Nelson Johnson's book as the basis for a TV series, my biggest challenge was choosing a time period in which to set it...Ultimately I settled on the 1920s of Atlantic City's legendary treasurer Nucky Johnson...A place of spectacle, shady politics, fast women and backroom deals". (Terence Winter, Emmy Award-winning writer of "The Sopranos" and Executive Producer of Boardwalk Empire). From its humble beginnings as a fledgling seaside resort, Atlantic City grew to be America's playground - loud, brash, and dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure. In 1920 alcohol was banned across…
I grew up in New Jersey and my paternal ancestors have lived here since 1732. My ancestors served in the Civil War, my father served in World War II and I also served in the military. From an early age, I wanted to be a writer, and that ambition, as well as my experience as an army officer in the Vietnam War, provided the sparks that ignited my writing career.
The ultimate New Jersey reference book. This publication is, without doubt, an essential title on the bookshelf of any New Jersey oriented author. With over 3,000 articles by experts in their fields of study, supplemented by illustrations and maps, it tells a comprehensive story of the state, including that it was the site of the first intercollegiate football game, and the first vote cast by an African American. If you have a question on New Jersey, you need this book, which has been cited as an outstanding reference work by the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance.
The Encyclopedia of New Jersey is the most extensive reference work ever published on the Garden State. The Encyclopedia contains nearly 3,000 original articles, along with 585 illustrations and 130 maps, collecting a wealth of information about the state in one volume. The Encyclopedia is filled with fascinating and interesting entries ranging from New Jersey's earliest history to the present. For example-Did you know that New Jersey was once divided into two parts-East Jersey and West Jersey? That streptomycin was first isolated at Rutgers University? Or that the first vote cast by an African American under the Fifteenth Amendment was…
I’ve loved, I’ve lost, and everything in between! Just like my protagonist, Jenna, in Just Call Me Confidence, life imitated art and I took a page from her “book,” having to begin anew. I’ve been the friend who has entertained all sorts of stories—sex, love, and rock n’ roll (wink, wink)—all without judgment. That role in my life continues, and what I’ve discovered in my “research” is this: Sex is wonderful, but there’s no greater joy than loving someone, even if it’s only for a little while. Read more about my take on sex, love, and rock n’ roll on my blog “Bone Up.”
I couldn’t compile a list of books without including Judy Blume. In the forty years since I read my first Blume novel, a lot of things have changed, and—many have stayed the same. Forever, first published in the mid-70s, is mildly erotic—and raw, and sensuous, and tender, and all the things that love and sex are. The sensual scenes are peppered in with great dialogue between the characters.
I especially love this book because no matter how many experiences I’ve had, I can still find a small piece of myself in protagonist Katherine—first sex, first love, first breakup, first death, and the many “firsts” that I’ve carried through my own life (divorce, pandemic, post-divorce love).
Forever may not always last, but it never fails to define chunks of our lives—always.
Forever is still the bravest, freshest, fruitiest and most honest account of first love, first sex and first heartbreak ever written for teens. It was a book ahead of its time - and remains, after forty years in print, a teenage bestseller from the award-winning Judy Blume.
With a contemporary cover, Forever is a teen classic ripe for a new generation of readers.
To be a successful humorous cozy mystery author, character development is the key. Prior to writing cozy mysteries, like the protagonist in my Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series, I enjoyed a career as a ladies’ apparel sales exec. Fortunately for my writing gig, salespeople are also students of human nature. I've been fascinated by what makes people tick all my life and have taken all I have learned and applied it to my writing. The relationship between the protagonist and her sidekick is one that makes the characters in my stories imperfect, but believable, accents their individuality, and lets their personalities come alive so that readers can’t help but invest in them.
Ironically, as a wordsmith, I absolutely adore the universal hilarity of physical comedy, an art form that transcends the need for words. So, I was immediately drawn to the slapstick antics of calamitous Trenton, NJ rookie bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. In this book, Stephanie is hot on the trail of bail jumper Kenny Mancuso. Low on expertise but learning fast, high on resilience, and despite the help she gets from friends and relatives, Stephanie is targeted by a loathsome adversary. Lula, Stephanie’s soon-to-be-sidekick, was first introduced as a minor character in the debut of the series, One for the Money.
Lula is a zaftig black ex-hooker who somehow squeezes her size 16 body into a size 10 spandex bodysuit. Lula’s wisecracking, street-smart philosophy is to always shoot first and ask questions later. In this second book of the series, Lula becomes a continuing character with her role as a file…
Kenny Mancuso shot his childhood buddy Moogey Bues and then jumped bail. Now bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is on the case to track Kenny down. Then someone finished Moogey off, Kenny can't be found, twenty-four coffins are missing, and there's some ex-army heavy artillery roaming the streets. And Joe Morelli - the cop with more than a professional interest in her every move - is tailing Stephanie. With a healthy disregard for the law, and an unhealthy dependence on marshmallow hot chocolate, Stephanie's a match for anyone - even Morelli. That is, until her eccentric grandmother goes AWOL and little…
My father advised me that to be a good writer, I should first learn a trade and particular subject matter from the inside out. As a working criminal justice practitioner for the last two decades, I’ve been lucky to work with some of the smartest people and best run organizations in the country. I’ve always been a big reader and someone who likes to link the sometimes brutally practical, day-to-day work of running an organization (I lead New York City’s main pretrial services agency) to larger philosophical issues. My life’s goal is to show how big ideas play themselves out in the day-to-day practice of public policy.
We don’t have enough books that celebrate how thoughtful and patient reform strategies can pay big dividends over time.
Journalist and Public Policy Professor David Kirp embedded himself in the community of Union City, New Jersey and documented how the school district has worked to improve educational outcomes in decidedly non-flashy ways.
As Kirp writes, all too often education reform has a “flavor of the month” and faddish quality to it, trapped in seemingly endless cycles of unrealistic big bang-style reforms and inevitable disappointments.
Improbable Scholars provides a hopeful counternarrative, showing that large-scale change is possible beyond a single stand-out school or teacher.
The conventional wisdom, voiced by everyone from Bill Gates to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, is that public schools are so terrible that simply reforming them won't do the trick. Instead, they must be "transformed," blown up and then rebuilt, if they're going to offer students a good education. We relish stories about electrifying teachers like Jaime Escalante, who made math whizzes out of no-hoper teenagers in East LA, or inner city charter schools like the KIPP academies. But success in the public schools of an entire city-a poor, crowded city, with more than its share of immigrant Latino youngsters, the…
I have been a reader and a writer for as long as I can remember, so books about reading, writing, and storytelling have always interested me. As a school library media specialist for over 30 years, I have read thousands of picture books and placed wonderful books in the hands of thousands of young people. Several of these books were mentor texts when I wrote my picture book biography. I want young people to be inspired to read and write, and I hope these books will do that for the adults who select them and the children who read them.
I found this book to be the perfect illustration of how writers get their ideas and inspiration. This “oh-so-simple picture book” emulates the simplicity of William Carlos Williams’s beloved poem, The Red Wheelbarrow.
I found it to be a very thoughtful and thought-provoking book. The gentle illustrations complement the lyrical text, and the prose is as lovely to read aloud as William Carlos Williams’s poem. It’s such great inspiration for writers of all ages.
This simple nonfiction picture book about the beloved American poet William Carlos Williams is also about how being mindful can result in the creation of a great poem like "The Red Wheelbarrow"--which is only sixteen words long.
"Look out the window. What do you see? If you are Dr. William Carlos Williams, you see a wheelbarrow. A drizzle of rain. Chickens scratching in the damp earth." The wheelbarrow belongs to Thaddeus Marshall, a street vendor, who every day goes to work selling vegetables on the streets of Rutherford, New Jersey. That simple action inspires poet and doctor Williams to pick…
Early in my life, I developed a keen appreciation of and a strong affinity for the unique culture encompassing the Jersey Shore, a lifestyle that unites infinite waves, distinctive art, soulful music, sand between one’s toes, and the dream of the endless summer. The sea speaks to me, and always has. My appreciation of the ocean and shore living leads me to seek comparable books with hopes of learning from and/or connecting with other writers like me, and it served as the basis of the setting for my novel, Enduring the Waves. I hope you make a similar connection to one of the books on my recommendation list.
Dominick Mazzagetti retells the history, culture, and landscapes found along the Jersey Shore in his nonfiction book The Jersey Shore: The Past, Present & Future of a National Treasure.
This book is a well-researched labor of love and discusses how the area from Sandy Hook to Cape May rose from being undeveloped sandy acres of land in the late 1600s to grand tourist resorts in the late 1800s.
I’ve used Mazzagetti’s book as research for articles and other works I write, especially about shipwrecks and Superstorm Sandy’s devastating impact in 2012. His clear voice engages and informs in a way that makes the place I call home come alive.
In The Jersey Shore, Dominick Mazzagetti provides a modern re-telling of the history, culture, and landscapes of this famous region, from the 1600s to the present. The Shore, from Sandy Hook to Cape May, became a national resort in the late 1800s and contributes enormously to New Jersey's economy today. The devastation of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 underscored the area's central place in the state's identity and the rebuilding efforts after the storm restored its economic health.
Divided into chronological and thematic sections, this book will attract general readers interested in the history of the Shore: how it appeared to…
I’m a proud Jersey girl who grew up walking to the ice cream shop where Tony Soprano took his last breath and spending summers “Down the Shore,” near the MTV house, where Snookie and Co. tried to claim the Jersey Shore as their own. When I was younger, outsiders almost had me convinced those overdone jokes about New Jersey were on to something. After traveling the world and living in other places, I realized how much my home state had to offer. My four young adult novels feature proud Jersey girl protagonists and two of my books are set at the real Jersey shore—The Summer After You and Me and August and Everything After.
I was honored to read an early draft of this novel by fellow human and Jerseyite, Val Emmich, and was immediately taken with the voice of Joan, a 10-year-old girl with a special condition that gives her the ability to remember everything, but is afraid of being forgotten. To remedy that, she wants to win a prestigious songwriting contest by writing a song that makes people both want to dance and cry (two of the strongest feelings in her opinion). So she strikes a deal with Gavin, an adult songwriter who she believes can help her make that happen. Jersey City is the primary setting for this novel, a city that along with its many other charms, offers spectacular views of the New York City skyline.
'A wonderful and unusual story told in a beautifully understated way. Quietly magnificent' Ruth Hogan, author of The Keeper of Lost Things
Ten-year-old Joan was born with a rare gift: she can remember every single day of her life in perfect detail. She can tell you how many times her mother has uttered the phrase 'it never fails' in the last six months (twenty-seven), or what she was wearing when her grandfather took her fishing on a particular Sunday in June years ago (fox socks).
But Joan doesn't want to be the girl who remembers everything - she wants to…
