Subtitle: 4th Edition
Author: John Cunningham
Subject: New Jersey and the Region
Paper ISBN 0-8135-2141-6
Pages: 281 pp. illus.

The extraordinary diversity of New Jersey is captured in this revised and up-to-date edition of This is New Jersey, for forty years a New Jersey classic and one of the most popular books ever written about the state. History, current problems, and opportunities for the future are skillfully blended in a book that makes it clear that there is a lot more to the state than can be imagined by those who speed through it on any of New Jersey's numerous highways or railways.

Ranking forty-sixth in size, the state has 7,836 square miles. It is the most urban and densely populated of the fifty states. It is an industrial state and a garden state, and it has a large recreation industry.

John Cunninham examines the state coutny by county, from the hill country to the city belt; from the garden spots to the Jersey shore. Each county segment now reflects population changes, both in areas of settlement and in numbers of people involved.

Historically, settlement in New Jersey goes back to the Lennni Lenape Indians, to the colonists, and to the state's place as the crossroads of the American Revolution.

To those who do not know the state's byways and quiet towns, it appears that highways abound. Yet there are also many thousands of acres of precious woodland preserved by park commissions in Essex and Union counties. In northern New Jersey alone, there are more than a million acres of hardwood forests. In southern New Jersey, over a milion acres of the fascinating Pine Barrens account for almost a quarter of the total sate area.

New Jersey is a land of lakes and mountains, of fishing docks and two-hundred-year-old houses, of farms and factories, of old universities and new commuting towns.

This edition retains the poular pictures and histories of each coutnry courthouse, the heart of county history and administration. This fully-redesigned edition is enhanced by several four-color and over 100 black and white illustrations by noted New Jersey photographer Walter Choroszewski. There is also a new bibliography and an index.

John Cunningham has been a lifelong resident of New Jersey. He is the author of thirty-three books, including Newark (distributed by Rutgers University Press) and over 1500 magazine articles. Five times a winner of the Award of Merit from the American Asscoiation for State and Local History, Mr. Cunningham has served as chairman of the New Jersey Historical Commission, vice chairman of the NEw Jersey Bicentennial Commission, and President of the NEw Jersey Historical Society. This Is New Jersey