Utopia, New Jersey

Utopia, New Jersey PDF Author: Perdita Buchan
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813543959
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Utopia. New Jersey. For most people—even the most satisfied New Jersey residents—these words hardly belong in the same sentence. Yet, unbeknown to many, history shows that the state has been a favorite location for utopian experiments for more than a century. Thanks to its location between New York and Philadelphia and its affordable land, it became an ideal proving ground where philosophical and philanthropical organizations and individuals could test their utopian theories. In this intriguing look at this little-known side of New Jersey, Perdita Buchan explores eight of these communities. Adopting a wide definition of the term utopia—broadening it to include experimental living arrangements with a variety of missions—Buchan explains that what the founders of each of these colonies had in common was the goal of improving life, at least as they saw it. In every other way, the communities varied greatly, ranging from a cooperative colony in Englewood founded by Upton Sinclair, to an anarchist village in Piscataway centered on an educational experiment, to the fascinating Physical Culture City in Spotswood, where drugs, tobacco, and corsets were banned, but where nudity was widespread. Despite their grand intentions, all but one of the utopias—a single-tax colony in Berkeley Heights—failed to survive. But Buchan shows how each of them left a legacy of much more than the buildings or street names that remain today—legacies that are inspiring, surprising, and often outright quirky.

Utopia, New Jersey

Utopia, New Jersey PDF Author: Perdita Buchan
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813543959
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book

Book Description
Utopia. New Jersey. For most people—even the most satisfied New Jersey residents—these words hardly belong in the same sentence. Yet, unbeknown to many, history shows that the state has been a favorite location for utopian experiments for more than a century. Thanks to its location between New York and Philadelphia and its affordable land, it became an ideal proving ground where philosophical and philanthropical organizations and individuals could test their utopian theories. In this intriguing look at this little-known side of New Jersey, Perdita Buchan explores eight of these communities. Adopting a wide definition of the term utopia—broadening it to include experimental living arrangements with a variety of missions—Buchan explains that what the founders of each of these colonies had in common was the goal of improving life, at least as they saw it. In every other way, the communities varied greatly, ranging from a cooperative colony in Englewood founded by Upton Sinclair, to an anarchist village in Piscataway centered on an educational experiment, to the fascinating Physical Culture City in Spotswood, where drugs, tobacco, and corsets were banned, but where nudity was widespread. Despite their grand intentions, all but one of the utopias—a single-tax colony in Berkeley Heights—failed to survive. But Buchan shows how each of them left a legacy of much more than the buildings or street names that remain today—legacies that are inspiring, surprising, and often outright quirky.

New Jersey

New Jersey PDF Author: Maxine N. Lurie
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813554101
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
New Jersey: A History of the Garden State presents a fresh, comprehensive overview of New Jersey’s history from the prehistoric era to the present. The findings of archaeologists, political, social, and economic historians provide a new look at how the Garden State has evolved. The state has a rich Native American heritage and complex colonial history. It played a pivotal role in the American Revolution, early industrialization, and technological developments in transportation, including turnpikes, canals, and railroads. The nineteenth century saw major debates over slavery. While no Civil War battles were fought in New Jersey, most residents supported it while questioning the policies of the federal government. Next, the contributors turn to industry, urbanization, and the growth of shore communities. A destination for immigrants, New Jersey continued to be one of the most diverse states in the nation. Many of these changes created a host of social problems that reformers tried to minimize during the Progressive Era. Settlement houses were established, educational institutions grew, and utopian communities were founded. Most notably, women gained the right to vote in 1920. In the decades leading up to World War II, New Jersey benefited from back-to-work projects, but the rise of the local Ku Klux Klan and the German American Bund were sad episodes during this period. The story then moves to the rise of suburbs, the concomitant decline of the state’s cities, growing population density, and changing patterns of wealth. Deep-seated racial inequities led to urban unrest as well as political change, including such landmark legislation as the Mount Laurel decision. Today, immigration continues to shape the state, as does the tension between the needs of the suburbs, cities, and modest amounts of remaining farmland. Well-known personalities, such as Jonathan Edwards, George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, Dorothea Dix, Thomas Edison, Frank Hague, and Albert Einstein appear in the narrative. Contributors also mine new and existing sources to incorporate fully scholarship on women, minorities, and immigrants. All chapters are set in the context of the history of the United States as a whole, illustrating how New Jersey is often a bellwether for the nation..

Utopia Project

Utopia Project PDF Author: Billy Dering
Publisher: Pinewald Press
ISBN: 9781735492919
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
After the Covid pandemic of 2020, several decades of escalating civil crises have ensued. The governments of many countries have conspired to develop the ultimate solution for controlling the lives of their citizens. The new society, forged in the secret Utopia Project, provides for all of your needs without cost, offers recreational group sex, raises offspring without parents and offers a life without stress. When the project's true purpose is revealed, a nightmare weapon turns the rest of the world into a mass grave of melted corpses. Inexplicably, not everyone died as planned. On the east coast of America, Sara Hyland and boyfriend Kid Carlson somehow survive. Hunted by the merciless forces of the Utopia Project, a single thread of hope is discovered in a gift box, given to Sara by her military father the night of the destruction. But is it too late to save humanity from extinction?

A New Jersey Anthology

A New Jersey Anthology PDF Author: Maxine N. Lurie
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 081354744X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 501

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Book Description
A New Jersey classic comes to life once more, and it's better than ever . . . "This excellent collection of essays covers the sweep of New Jersey history from the colonial, proprietary era to the recent politics of Mount Laurel. It brings together some of the finest writing on the state, and raises questions relevant to major themes in American history more generally. Maxine N. Lurie has provided an excellent introductory essay to contextualize each piece in the collection, and each essay also comes with suggestions for further reading on the topic." -Paul G. E. Clemens, history department, Rutgers University Praise for the prior edition . . . "An absolutely superb collection in every aspect, this covers all of the chronological and topical bases with remarkable comprehensiveness. Contributions are not only appropriate to the purpose of the book; they have the additional merit of being very significant pieces of scholarship on their own, not only in the history of New Jersey but in American history in general. . . . Lurie's illuminating headnotes for each article, which include not only shrewd interpretive insights but also bibliographical references, set this book significantly apart." -Douglas Greenberg, Dean of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers University MAXINE N. LURIE is a professor of history at Seton Hall University. She is the author of a number of articles and book chapters on early American and New Jersey history, the editor of the first edition of this anthology, and the coeditor of the Encyclopedia of New Jersey and Mapping New Jersey (all Rutgers University Press).

Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair

Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair PDF Author: Anthony Arthur
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0307431657
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Few American writers have revealed their private as well as their public selves so fully as Upton Sinclair, and virtually none over such a long lifetime (1878—1968). Sinclair’s writing, even at its most poignant or electrifying, blurred the line between politics and art–and, indeed, his life followed a similar arc. In Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair, Anthony Arthur weaves the strands of Sinclair’s contentious public career and his often-troubled private life into a compelling personal narrative. An unassuming teetotaler with a fiery streak, called a propagandist by some, the most conservative of revolutionaries by others, Sinclair was such a driving force of history that one could easily mistake his life story for historical fiction. He counted dozens of epochal figures as friends or confidants, including Mark Twain, Jack London, Henry Ford, Thomas Mann, H. G. Wells, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, Albert Camus, and Carl Jung. Starting with The Jungle in 1906, Sinclair’s fiction and nonfiction helped to inform and mold American opinions about socialism, labor and industry, religion and philosophy, the excesses of the media, American political isolation and pacifism, civil liberties, and mental and physical health. In his later years, Sinclair twice reinvented himself, first as the Democratic candidate for governor of California in 1934, and later, in his sixties and seventies, as a historical novelist. In 1943 he won a Pulitzer Prize for Dragon’s Teeth, one of eleven novels featuring super-spy Lanny Budd. Outside the literary realm, the ever-restless Sinclair was seemingly everywhere: forming Utopian artists’ colonies, funding and producing Sergei Eisenstein’s film documentaries, and waging consciousness-raising political campaigns. Even when he wasn’t involved in progressive causes or counterculture movements, his name often was invoked by them–an arrangement that frequently embroiled Sinclair in controversy. Sinclair’ s passion and optimistic zeal inspired America, but privately he could be a frustrated, petty man who connected better with his readers than with members of his own family. His life with his first wife, Meta, his son David, and various friends and professional acquaintances was a web of conflict and strain. Personally and professionally ambitious, Sinclair engaged in financial speculation, although his wealth-generating schemes often benefited his pet causes–and he lobbied as tirelessly for professional recognition and awards as he did for government reform. As the tenor of his work would suggest, Sinclair was supremely human. In Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair, Anthony Arthur offers an engrossing and enlightening account of Sinclair’s life and the country he helped to transform. Taking readers from the Reconstruction South to the rise of American power to the pinnacle of Hollywood culture to the Civil Rights era, this is historical biography at its entertaining and thought-provoking finest.

New Jersey Ghost Towns

New Jersey Ghost Towns PDF Author: Patricia A. Martinelli
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811745783
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
Explores settlements and towns that have been deserted, transformed into tourist attractions, or have less than 200 residents and are mere shadows of their former selves.

The Big Book of New Jersey Ghost Stories

The Big Book of New Jersey Ghost Stories PDF Author: Patricia A. Martinelli
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493043838
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Hauntings lurk and spirits linger in the Garden State Reader, beware! Turn these pages and enter the world of the paranormal, where ghosts and ghouls alike creep just out of sight. Authors Patricia A. Martinelli and Charles A. Stansfield Jr. shine a light in the dark corners of New Jersey and scare those spirits out of hiding in this thrilling collection. From what may lurk in the Ramapo Mountains, to a ghostly little boy who waits on Clinton Road, and the fabled Jersey Devil itself, these stories of strange occurrences will keep you glued to the edge of your seat. Around the campfire or tucked away on a dark and stormy night, this big book of ghost stories is a hauntingly good read.

Capital's Utopia

Capital's Utopia PDF Author: Anne E. Mosher
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421429241
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
In the 1890s the Apollo Iron and Steel Company ended a bitterly contested labor dispute by hiring replacement workers from the surrounding countryside. To avoid future unrest, however, the company sought to gain tighter control over its workers not only at the factory but also in their homes. Drawing upon a philosophy of reform movements in Europe and the United States, the firm decided that providing workers with good housing and a good urban environment would make them more loyal and productive. In 1895, Apollo Iron and Steel built a new, integrated, non-unionized steelworks and hired the nation's preeminent landscape architectural firm (Olmsted, Olmsted, and Eliot) to design the model industrial town: Vandergrift. In Capital's Utopia: Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, 1855-1916, Anne E. Mosher offers the first comprehensive geographical overview of the industrial restructuring of an American steelworks and its workforce in the late nineteenth–century. In addition, by offering a thorough analysis of the Olmsted plan, Mosher integrates historical geography and labor history with landscape architectural history and urban studies. As a result, this book is far more than a case study. It is a window into an important period of industrial development and its consequences on communities and environments in the world-famous steel country of southwestern Pennsylvania.

Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia

Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia PDF Author: Anthony M. Townsend
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039324153X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
An unflinching look at the aspiring city-builders of our smart, mobile, connected future. From Beijing to Boston, cities are deploying smart technology—sensors embedded in streets and subways, Wi-Fi broadcast airports and green spaces—to address the basic challenges faced by massive, interconnected metropolitan centers. In Smart Cities, Anthony M. Townsend documents this emerging futuristic landscape while considering the motivations, aspirations, and shortcomings of the key actors—entrepreneurs, mayors, philanthropists, and software developers—at work in shaping the new urban frontier.

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear PDF Author: Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541788486
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
A tiny American town's plans for radical self-government overlooked one hairy detail: no one told the bears. Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, they set their sights on Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road. When they descended on Grafton, public funding for pretty much everything shrank: the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse. State and federal laws became meek suggestions, scarcely heard in the town's thick wilderness. The anything-goes atmosphere soon caught the attention of Grafton's neighbors: the bears. Freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal. They built a tent city in an effort to get off the grid. The bears smelled food and opportunity. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is the sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying tale of what happens when a government disappears into the woods. Complete with gunplay, adventure, and backstabbing politicians, this is the ultimate story of a quintessential American experiment -- to live free or die, perhaps from a bear.