4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land
Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • OFFENSIVE ,POLITICALLY CORRECT TRASH
  • How not to run a city
  • Down the Shore
  • Who knew?
  • A revelation on every page
 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land
Daniel Wolff
Manufacturer: Bloomsbury USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1582345090
Release Date: 2005-06-16

Book Description

The story of the boardwalk town Bruce Springsteen made famous-and a quintessential portrait of small-town American democracy.

When Bruce Springsteen called his first album Greetings from Asbury Park, he introduced a generation of fans to a fallen seaside resort town that came to represent working-class American life. But behind this archetypal small-town landscape lies a complicated past.

Starting with the town's founding as a religious promised land, music journalist and poet Daniel Wolff plots a course through 130 years of entwined social and musical history, touching on John Philip Sousa, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, and Frankie Lymon on the way to the town Bruce was born to run from. Out of the details of local history-the boardwalk in the Gilded Age; the celebrities who passed through, from Stephen Crane to Martin Luther King; sensational murder trials; the birth of Mob control; and a devastating mid-century "race riot"-emerges a universal story of one small town's fortunes. Told with grace and full of fascinating detail, Daniel Wolff's tour across thirteen decades of the Fourth of July in Asbury Park captures all the allure and heartbreak of the American dream reduced to blight and decay, with gentrification as the one hope for a return to its glory days.

Customer Reviews:

1 out of 5 stars OFFENSIVE ,POLITICALLY CORRECT TRASH.......2007-05-07

I am offended by this book.
It is politically correct,which in itself is a turn-off,but the author,Daniel Wolff,seems neither to understand the history of Asbury Park,nor appreciate the fact that that history CANNOT be viewed through a politically correct microscope.
To begin with Asbury Park,as well as nearby Ocean Grove were begun as strictly conservative religious communities...Wolff either does not understand the importance of this fact,or is himself offended by its implications.Furthermore,both communities were begun not as public,but as PRIVATE communities.Absbury park,unlike Ocean Grove,was not wholly owned by the Methodist church but was,instead,owned and operated by one man,james Bradey,himself a strict Methodist ...
To understand Asbury Park and not understand that THINGS WERE VERY VERY DIFFERENT IN THE 19th century is to not understand anything at all...Wolff seems intent upon grafting 21st century values and thinking upon a 19th century canvas,something that just does not work..
Take,for example,the problems caused by the black population of that time,who neither owned any property in Asbury Park,nor even lived within that communities borders..These people were,for the most part,employed as "menials",i.e.porters,cooks,maids and suchlike...It was a time when the sort of equality that is commonplace today was NOT commonplace..And Asbury Park,like any other BUSINESS VENTURE,depended upon a monied customer base in order to both thrive and expand...and in the 19th century that monied customer base,like it or not,was white,AND not a little bit bigoted against blacks..Sure,by today's standards such behaviour would not be tolerated,but it is apparent that Wolff does not understand that 1880 is not 2007,and that what today would not be tolerated in 1880,1890,1900,ect was both tolerated and commonplace.So instead of understanding this fact,and writing about Asbury Park AS IT WAS,Wolff instead makes his focus the fact that blacks,who were employed at various businesses in Asbury Park were nonetheless not wanted as paying customers whose presence tended to deter the monied white from coming there..
Wolff celebrates defiance..Instead of appreciating that the 19th century,for the most part was a far different,more conservative place that almost anywhere is today,he istead tends to deride the values that were prevailing and glorify the critics..One of these was author Stephen Crane,famous for the novel"The Red Badge of Courage"but,at that time,a relentless critic of everything Brady's Asbury Park represented..Most people who came to Asbury Park at that time had little problem with theprevailing atmosphere of conservative,religiously oriented standards(otherwise how could either Asbury Park of nearby Ocean Grove thrive,as they most certainly did?)but Wolff chooses to ignore this fact and instead zero in on the rebels,like Crane,who apparently felt that it was his job to spit on the status Quo..
Throughout the book Wolff makes the saga of Asbury Park one great big "civil rights"saga..Which,of course,it was not...Further,Wolff fails to understand why Asbury Park became the washed up slum that,until only recently,it was..Like it or not,the monied interests,both in terms of capital and the tourist trade,were largely dominated by whites who deserted Asbury Park when other more"exclusive"getaways presented themselves(in the more modern era of automobile and airplane travel),leaving the town largely to its black population,under which like every other big city in New Jersey,quickly degenerated into a slum...
Does this sound a tad bigoted?Maybe,but bigoted or not the fact remains that when whites fled the inner-cities and the old shore resort towns,the new black majorities there no longer attracted tourists or industry..
Wolff fails to understand that tourists WITH MONEY do not have to go to places like Asbury Park...They do not have to mingle,on an equal basis,with those whom they employ to cut thier hair or shine thier shoes..Sure,in a"perfect"world everyone would not only be"equal"but accepting and considerate towards everyone else,but unless you have been living with your eyes and ears closed,ours has never been a perfect world,not today,and certainly not in the 19th century,which was Asbury Park's heyday...So Wolff,failing to understand reality,instead paints his word-picture of Asbury Park in strokes that have little in common with reality..
Another one of Wolff's heroic figures is Bruce Springsteen..Wolff celebrates Springsteen's lyrics about the working man,and all of the rest of his contrived twaddle,as if the songs that have made it possible for Springsteen to enjoy a lifestyle far removed from just about anyone he ever encountered in Asbury Park somehow has meaning with regard to the city itself..Surely if Springsteen's lyrics did have any real relevance to the real Asbury Park,then Springsteen himself would still be living there..Instead he lives(at least part of the time)in Rumson,new jersey,the sort of rich beach community,populated mainly by rich whites like himself,that,in his book,Wolff so denigrates...
This book is trash..It has no idea what reality represents,either way back when,in the 19th century,or now,in the politically correct 21st century..Springsteen,wolff's anti-hero from Asbury Park,may sing about the disenfranchised,but like the white people of that long ago Asbury Park,he doesn't live among them..

5 out of 5 stars How not to run a city.......2007-04-14

Not a Bruce Springsteen bio or critique and not advertised as one, 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land by Daniel Wolff fits its eponymus title exactly.

Please excuse any hubris - it is not intended - but you will enjoy this book a lot more if you have an aquaintance and familiarity with Asbury (the only name by which it was referred). And, while my title aptly describes what this book addressses, I have to admit to being stunned by the history author Wolff presents.

Key to that is the knowledge that Asbury Park did not develop as city through what I'll call natural means. There was no influx of population that arrived and, other time, established roots and the attendant need for a municipal structure to meet public needs. Instead, it was the creation of a individual who in this day and age would be called a fundamentalist Christian but was profit-minded enough that he wanted to work on Sundays.

The creation was named Asbury Park after noted Methodist Francis Asbury and its mission, if you will, was to provide beach-related services to the quasi-rich. This is did with notable success to its customer-base while providing virtually nothing to the population that worked there. Its municipal government was based on the premise of "of the influencial, for the wealthy, supported by the down-trodden." This precept cannot be better depicted than by the fact that the blacks who worked in the city's nyriiad hotels and business not only lived literally on the wrong side of the railway tracks but also lived in an area not incorporated into the city until the 20th Century so that the administration did not have to provide services to them.

The Administrations also subscribed to the "no honor among thieves" doctrine by engaging in perpetual internicine warfare among themselves to win the mayoralty and patronage dispensations. But, irregardless of whomsoever was in power, there was adherence to the notion that public funds were - after appropriate skimming - only to be spent on the tourists. This left the city with an elegant ocean facing facade backed by a rotting infrastructure.

With the advent of cheap airfare in the 1960s, tourists ceased to come to the Jersey Shore, choosing instead sites in the Caribbean and Mexico. With the slowdown in revenue, the city collapsed inwardly and, by the 1970/1980 period devolved into the Beruit cum Baghdad appearance it has to this day.

Wolff portrays this history in a clear, concise fashion and does name the names and cite the crimes. His appraisals are scrupulously honest and fair. He points out that the tendency to fortget anything more than, say, five blocks from the boardwalk was not limited by race, color, creed or place of national origin; in a way, he provces that corruption is the best example of diversity.

All in all, an excellent book. It broke my heart to read it.

5 out of 5 stars Down the Shore.......2005-10-26

This book is a great resource. As a person who grew up "down the shore" adjacent to Asbury Park, I've learned a tremendous amount about the area's history. Interesting read with a great level of detail and chapter notes. I had borrowed it from the library but wanted my own copy to add to my shore book collection.

5 out of 5 stars Who knew? .......2005-10-22

Who knew that the history of a town that I had never heard of in New Jersey would yield such an interesting read? The town is set up in such a way that it resembles some of the seedy racist behaviors that all of us would like to believe don't exist anymore but need to come to terms with.
There is plenty of talk about Springsteen, but there is also plenty of well-researched information on the rest of the love-to-hate-'em characters in the town.

5 out of 5 stars A revelation on every page.......2005-10-16

I am a Jersey kid by birth. I graduated high school the same year as Bruce Springsteen, but about 50 miles away. It might as well have been 5 million miles.

As a kid, there were family trips to the boardwalk at Asbury Park. When I was in high school, there were concerts at Convention Hall. I even dated a girl who's family spent part of the summer in Ocean Grove, but that's a story for another time. To me, Asbury Park was the length and breadth of the beach and boardwalk.

It was obvious, even to an infrequent visitor like me, that the city was in terrible decline, but it took this book to explain how and why that happened, and, at the same time, place that experience within a much larger context.

The stresses caused by the fundamental dichotomies that Asbury Park was built on are the same ones that challenge much of the U.S. Religion and commerce, racial conflict, the strengths and weaknesses of machine politics, even the tug-of-war of fantasy and reality, they are all in Asbury Park's history, and they are all around us, wherever we are. Those conflicts all took a terrible toll on Asbury Park, just as they all take a toll everywhere.

In this book, Daniel Wolff tells us the history of a small place, and in the telling, illuminates larger truths. It is no coincidence that Springsteen's fame grew as he found ways to express his universal themes without tying them to a specific place and time. In his own way, Daniel Wolfe lets us see how and why that happened.

As serious as the subject matter is, the book is written in a deftly lighthanded style that makes reading it a completely enjoyable event. Don't miss it.
Bigger than Life: A Murder, a Memoir (American Lives)
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • A Treasure
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 Bigger than Life: A Murder, a Memoir (American Lives)
Dinah Lenney
Manufacturer: University of Nebraska Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Nelson Gross led an outsized life—one in which he played many roles: father, brother, husband, politician, entrepreneur. When he was killed by a couple of teenagers in a botched abduction and robbery, the murder shook his family in predictable and terrible ways. For his daughter, Dinah Lenney, the parent of her own young children, the loss sparked a self-reckoning that led to this book, which is both a meditation on grief and a coming of age story. By turns funny and sad, frustrating and fulfilling, her candid memoir conducts readers through marriage and divorce, blended and broken families—and, finally, the kinds of conflict that infect the best of us under the best of circumstances.
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4 out of 5 stars A Treasure.......2007-05-16

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5 out of 5 stars More than a memoir.......2007-04-13

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5 out of 5 stars WONDERFUL CHARACTER STUDY.......2007-04-11

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Paterson II
Average customer rating: Not rated
    		Paterson II
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    Working at Inventing: Thomas A. Edison and the Menlo Park Experience
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          Sarah Lawrence College professor Komozi Woodard convincingly argues that Amiri Baraka was not only the most original black poet, author, dramatist, and cultural critic to emerge from the 1960s but also that era's most important nexus between the politics and artistic movements. "The serious study of Black Power," he writes, "must begin with an examination of its most important experiments ... specifically, the leadership of Amiri Baraka and the dynamics of black cultural nationalism." Woodard details Baraka's visit to revolutionary Cuba and the influence of Patrice Lumumba on his thinking; the black-arts movement Baraka helped found and the black/Puerto Rican coalitions he forged; his ambitious but flawed housing ventures in Newark, New Jersey; and his heroic efforts to hold together the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana. Woodard weaves a complex picture detailing the ascendance of a modern cultural icon and the political landscape he helped create. --Eugene Holley Jr.

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          5 out of 5 stars This is a must read for all interested in politics and race.......1999-08-27

          Woodard writes about the relationship of black power, black cultural arts, and the black nationalist movement with LeRoi Jones, later Amiri Baraka, one of its main supporters. ... He concludes that Black America requires an ideological and political arsenal of both nationalism and Marxism. But at no time can the emphasis be purely Marxist or nationalist without doing damage to the black community. In other words, sectarianism is the enemy of black liberation and the fight for equality. This is a must read for all interested in politics and race in the U.S. Recommended for undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. -- P. Barton-Kriese, Indiana University East, Choice July/August 1999

          5 out of 5 stars The most important book on Black Power Movement.......1999-05-23

          Professor Peniel Joseph writes that, "Historian Komozi Woodard's `A Nation Within A Nation' ... stands out as the most important book to be written about the Black Power Movement. `A Nation Within A Nation' is really several books rolled into one. First, it is a well-researched and painstakingly detailed case study of the dramatic consequences of Black Power politics on [the] racial and political dynamics of Newark, New Jersey during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Second, it is a political biography that underscores the significance of Amiri Baraka to the Black Power Movement's rise and eventual decline in American politics. Third, the book explores the transformation of black cultural nationalism during the Black Power era and Baraka's pivotal role in contemporizing black nationalism as an expressive political and cultural vehicle. Finally, it's a study of the divese and complex matrix that produced black political thought and practice during the period; a historical interrogation of the national and international implications of radical anti-colonial discourses that undergirded Black Power politics."

          5 out of 5 stars One of the most comprehensive studies of black nationalism........1999-03-08

          According to Publishers Weekly, "Woodard examines the role of poet Amiri Baraka's `cultural politics' on Black Power and black nationalism in the 1960s. After a brief overview of the evolution of black nationalism since slavery, he focuses on activities in Northeastern urban centers (Baraka's milieus were Newark, NJ, and, to a lesser extent, New York City). Taking issue with scholars who see cultural nationalism as self-destructive, Woodard finds it "fundamental to the endurance of the Black Revolt from the 1960s into the 1970s." California Senator Tom Hayden, says: "The fascinating story of a struggle that nearly succeeded in creating self-determination in the urban ghetto" And, in Professor Robin D.G. Kelley's assessment, the book "will be one of the most important studies of black urban politics and culture in the postwar period." As far as Professor Michael B. Katz is concerned, it "breaks new ground and revises standard interpretations of the era. I am particularly impressed with the way he has connected political mobilization to movements in the arts, literature, and intellectual life, on the one hand, and to the restructuring of American life, on the other. It's a hardheaded, unflinching analysis, and he tells it well and with great feeling." Finally, Professor John Dittmer found it "Balanced and moving." "It should be required reading ... for all citizens who care about the problems of race and class in urban America. ... quite simply, one of the most important books we have on the black urban experience in the twentieth century ... by one of the leading scholars of the African American experience in this country." The book concludes that there have been five distinct phases in the history of black nationality formation in the U.S. The first phase was the ethnogenesis of African Americans during slavery; that established the social and cultural foundations of Black America. The second was the black nationalism that flowered before the Civil War among free Blacks in the urban North. A third phase resulted from the failure of the Civil War and Reconstruction to guarantee full citizenship for African Americans; under racial oppression and Jim Crow segregation, a subject nation developed in the Black Belt areas of the South. The most vivid example of that phase of nationality formation was the great Kansas Exodus. The fourth phase of black nationality formation resulted from the Great Migration of perhaps 1.5 million African Americans and from the development of large, compact, black concentrations in the ghettos of America; the flowering of that nationalism is seen in the Garvey Movement of the 1920s. And finally, a fifth stage of nationality formation ensued from the migration of 4 million Black Americans form the South between 1940 and 1970 and the development of dozens of "second ghettos," that generated hundreds of urban uprisings during the 1960s; that sense of modern nationality was heralded by the Black Power movement and the politics of Black cultural nationalism.
          Public Sculpture in New Jersey: Monuments to Collective Identiy
          Average customer rating: Not rated
            		Public Sculpture in New Jersey: Monuments to Collective Identiy
            Meredith Arms Bzdak
            Manufacturer: Rutgers University Press
            ProductGroup: Book
            Binding: Paperback

            GeneralGeneral | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
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            History & CriticismHistory & Criticism | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books | Criticism | General | Regional | Themes | Women in Art
            GeneralGeneral | Sculpture | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
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            ASIN: 0813527007
            Great Houses and Gardens of New Jersey
            Average customer rating: Not rated
              		Great Houses and Gardens of New Jersey
              Caroline Seebohm
              Manufacturer: Rutgers University Press
              ProductGroup: Book
              Binding: Hardcover

              GeneralGeneral | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
              ResidentialResidential | Building Types & Styles | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
              LandscapeLandscape | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
              GeneralGeneral | History & Periods | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
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              Garden DesignGarden Design | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
              GeneralGeneral | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
              LandscapeLandscape | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
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              ASIN: 0813533317

              Book Description

              New Jersey is called the Garden State with good reason¾ some of the nation's most strikingly beautiful homes and gardens can be found within its borders. Caroline Seebohm and Peter C. Cook have captured them gloriously in Great Houses and Gardens of New Jersey.

              No other book has so beautifully presented the architectural story of the state, stunningly documented in more than 200 color photographs¾ from a centuries-old farm to modern glass houses, from woodlands planted with native plants to formal French and English-style gardens. Each house and garden is privately owned, and many have never before been photographed. Readers are given an exclusive peek at some of New Jersey's greatest treasures.

              Seebohm and Cook take us on a private tour of a pre-revolutionary Dutch farmhouse that could have sprung from the coast of Devon in England; a brick-patterned house that vividly expresses the originality and exuberance of the region's early builders and craftsmen; a collection of native stone buildings reminiscent of Bucks County, Pennsylvania; and an Arts and Crafts house with contributions by New Jersey's innovative Gustav Stickley. The twentieth century is equally well represented with works by masters such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Robert Venturi, Michael Graves, and Richard Meier.

              The book showcases gardens of dazzling splendor and variety¾ woodlands ablaze with native azaleas and dogwoods; a charming sunken garden by well-known English garden designer Penelope Hobhouse; a stunning water garden on the Navesink River; a tiny formal garden surrounded by a picket fence in Somerset County; a garden in Alpine carpeted with bluebells in the spring, scented with roses in the summer, and with orchids on display all year round.
              It Came from New Jersey! My Life As an Artist (The Real Deal on the Goosebumps Cover Artist)
              Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
              • Perfect for the Jacobus fan!
              • Great Book
              		 It Came from New Jersey! My Life As an Artist (The Real Deal on the Goosebumps Cover Artist)
              Tim Jacobus
              Manufacturer: Scholastic
              ProductGroup: Book
              Binding: Paperback

              ArtArt | Biographies | People & Places | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
              DrawingDrawing | Art | Arts & Music | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
              GeneralGeneral | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
              ASIN: 0590108530

              Customer Reviews:

              5 out of 5 stars Perfect for the Jacobus fan!.......1998-06-26

              I have written to Tim Jacobus but I never knew about his personal life. Now, with this book I know almost everything about him! If you're a fan of Jacobus definitely buy this book.

              5 out of 5 stars Great Book.......1998-04-29

              It came from New Jersey is very
              cool because it the Il. of
              Goosbumps and I got some info did
              you know R.L. Stine and Tim
              Jacobus only saw each other one or
              two or mabie three time in there
              hole life

              Books:

              1. 50 Places to Find Peace and Quiet in New York: A Guide to Urban Sanctuaries
              2. Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development (3rd Edition)
              3. Becoming a Writer
              4. Best of the Best from New Mexico Cookbook: Selected Recipes from New Mexico's Favorite Cookbooks (Best of the Best Cookbook)
              5. Bicycling The Pacific Coast: A Complete Route Guide, Canada To Mexico
              6. Calculus Problem Solver (REA) (Problem Solvers)
              7. City Walks: Paris: 50 Adventures on Foot
              8. Collins German Unabridged Dictionary 5th Edition (Harpercollins Unabridged Dictionaries)
              9. Common Errors in English Usage
              10. Cry, the Beloved Country (Oprah's Book Club)

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