New Jersey’s Natures takes up the challenge of expanding academic and popular conceptions of New Jersey and its landscapes through the lens of environmental history. Scholars’ essays showcase the ways in which nature is integral to understandings of the state and its past as well as its future. These essays show that New Jersey should no longer solely be known as a place where pollution and suburbanization run amok, but rather a place where history happens.
The contributors investigate how nature and history are intertwined within this small but mighty state, covering topics from the colonial period to the present across North, South, and Central Jersey. They investigate natural features like the Delaware River and Bay, the Pinelands, and the unforgettable Jersey Shore. In this book you will find: indigenous Americans making meaning as settlers threaten their ways of life, Governor William Livingston considering Central Jersey’s features as he fights in the American Revolution, farmers building the state’s industrial agriculture, a foreign diplomat planting an arboretum, squatters in the swampy Meadowlands subverting social and economic norms, activists fighting for parks, forests, and beaches across two centuries, and much more.
Foreword – Neil M. Maher
Introduction – Raechel Lutz
Part 1: North Jersey
Chapter 1 – Sevin Yildiz
Chapter 2 – Erin Becker-Boris
Chapter 3 – Charlotte Leib
Part II: Central Jersey
Chapter 4 – James J. Gigantino II
Chapter 5 – Daniel L. Druckenbrod
Part III: South Jersey
Chapter 6 – Christine Woodside
Chapter 7 – Andy Urban
Chapter 8 – Tina Peabody
Part IV: Delaware Water Gap
Chapter 9 – Chad Anderson
Chapter 10 – Christopher J. Slaby
Chapter 11 – Michael Chiarappa
Part V: The Pinelands
Chapter 12 – Robert Hoberman
Chapter 13 – Jordan P. Howell and Zachary Rouhas
Part VI: The Shore
Chapter 14 – Aris Damadian Lindemans
Chapter 15 – Melissa Ziobro
