Month: November 2009

New Jersey History Journal Resurrected After 4 Years

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The journal New Jersey History, founded as the Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society in 1845 and published under the direction of the Society until 2005, has been re-launched under the editorial direction of historians at the New Jersey Historical Commission, Kean University, and the Society. This peer-reviewed journal will be published online twice a year by the Rutgers University Libraries.

Peter Mickulas, editor of New Jersey History, has written New York History to say that the renewal of the Garden State’s premiere historical journal should be of interest to historians of New York as well. &#8220We’re likely to publish (and recruit) items of interest to New York historians and historians of New Netherlands in particular,&#8221 he told me in an e-mail, &#8220As the editor, I’m going construe &#8220regional&#8221 topics broadly.&#8221

The editorial staff invites scholars, students, and writers to submit scholarly articles aimed at a non-specialized audience for its forthcoming issues. They welcome essays from all disciplines &#8211 for example, law, literature, political science, anthropology, archaeology, material culture, cultural studies, and social and political history &#8211 bearing on any aspects of New Jersey’s history.

They are also interested in documents, photographs, and other primary source material that could be published with annotations.

The Fall 2009 issue, Volume 124, number 1, is now available online. This issue, the first published in four years, includes the following essays:

* Lucia McMahon, William Paterson University, &#8220&#8216-A More Accurate and Extensive Education than is Customary’: Educational Opportunities for Women in Early Nineteenth-Century New Jersey&#8221

* Matthew T. Raffety, University of Redlands, &#8220Political Ethics and Public Style in the Early Career of Jersey City’s Frank Hague&#8221

* Richard W. Hunter, Nadine Sergejeff and Damon Tvaryanas, &#8220On The Eagle’s Wings: Textiles, Trenton, and a First Taste of the Industrial Revolution&#8221

* Michael Kazin, Georgetown University, &#8220The Arc of Liberalism and the Career of Harrison &#8216-Pete’ Williams&#8221

The issue also presents a new historic &#8220Survey of the Canals and Water Raceways of New Jersey&#8221 by the New Jersey Geological Survey and reviews of new and notable scholarship on the history of the state.

NJH is also supported by the New Jersey Digital Highway, which will provide an additional access point for the journal from its website, and will preserve the digital version of the journal via the RUcore preservation platform. Rutgers University Press will help market the new journal, enabling it to reach the broadest possible audience.

For further details email peter.mickulas[AT]sos.state.nj.us or visit the journal homepage.

Books: The Bronxs Boulevard of Dreams

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Stretching over four miles through the center of the West Bronx, the Grand Boulevard and Concourse, known simply as the Grand Concourse, has served as a silent witness to the changing face of the Bronx, and New York City, for a century. To coincide with the Concourse’s centennial, New York Times editor Constance Rosenblum has written a book, Boulevard of Dreams: Heady Times, Heartbreak, and Hope along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx that brings to life this historic street.

Designed by a French engineer in the late nineteenth century to echo the elegance and grandeur of the Champs Elysees in Paris, the Concourse was nearly twenty years in the making (it celebrated its centennial in November). Over that century it has truly been a boulevard of dreams for various upwardly mobile immigrant and ethnic groups, yet it has also seen the darker side of the American dream.

Constance Rosenblum unearths the history of the street and its neighborhoods through a series of life stories and historical vignettes. The story of the creation and transformation of the Grand Concourse is the story of New York—and America—writ large, and Rosenblum examines the Grand Concourse from its earliest days to the blighted 1960s and 1970s right up to the current period of renewal. Illustrated with historical photographs, the vivid world of the Grand Concourse comes alive—from Yankee Stadium to the unparalleled collection of Art Deco apartments to the palatial Loew’s Paradise movie theater.

The publishers call it &#8220An enthralling story of the creation of an iconic street, an examination of the forces that transformed it, and a moving portrait of those who called it home, Boulevard of Dreams is a must read for anyone interested in the rich history of New York and the twentieth-century American city.&#8221