Certificate of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History Most Americans today live in the suburbs. Yet suburban voices remain largely unheard in sociological and cultural studies of these same communities. In Suburban Landscapes: Culture and Politics in a New York Metropolitan Community, Paul Mattingly provides a new model for understanding suburban development through his narrative history of Leonia, New Jersey, an early commuter suburb of New York City. Although Leonia is a relatively small suburb, a study of this kind has national significance because most of America's suburbs began as rural communities, with histories that predated the arrival of commuters and real estate developers. Examining the dynamics of community cultural formation, Mattingly contests the prevailing urban and suburban dichotomy. In doing so, he offers a respite from journalistic cliches and scholarly bias about the American suburb, providing instead an insightful, nuanced look at the integrative history of a region. Mattingly examines Leonia's politics and culture through three eras of growth and change (1859-94, 1894-1920, and 1920-60). A major part of Leonia's history, Mattingly reveals, was its role as an attractive community for artists and writers, many contributors to national magazines, who created a 'suburban' aesthetic. The work done by generations of Leonias' artists provides an important vantage and a wonderful set of tools for exploring evolving notions of suburban culture and landscape, which have broad implications and applications. Oral histories, census records, and the extensive work of Leonia's many artists and writers come together to trace not only the community's socially diverse history, but to show how residents viewed the growth and transformation of Leonia as well.

From the earliest memorials used by Native Americans to the elaborate structures of the present day, Richard Veit and Mark Nonestied use grave markers to take an off-beat look at New Jersey’s history that is both fascinating and unique. New Jersey Cemeteries and Tombstones presents a culturally diverse account of New Jersey’s historic burial places from High Point to Cape May and from the banks of the Delaware to the ocean-washed Shore, to explain what cemeteries tell us about people and the communities in which they lived. The evidence ranges from somber seventeenth-century decorations such as hourglasses and skulls that denoted the brevity of colonial life, to modern times where memorials, such as a life-size granite Mercedes Benz, reflect the materialism of the new millennium. Also considered are contemporary novelties such as pet cemeteries and what they reveal about today’s culture. To tell their story the authors visited more than 1,000 burial grounds and interviewed numerous monument dealers and cemetarians. This richly illustrated book is essential reading for history buffs and indeed anyone who has ever wandered inquisitively through their local cemeteries.

The book portrays New Jersey as an ecosystem--its geology, topography and soil, climate, plant-plant and plant-animal relationships, and the human impact on the environment. The authors describe in detail the twelve types of plant habitats distinguished in New Jersey and suggest places to observe good examples of them.

Reprint of another classic Neolithic Studies Group volume. 'It is a sign of the intellectual health of a specialist study group that its deliberations can generate collections of papers of general interest. The topical issue of landscape is addressed, although with the added complication of attempting to focus on the domestic as opposed to ceremonial aspects of Neolithic life'.

Were you surprised to find you were reading a description of New Jersey? If so, you aren't alone. Even many New Jerseyans don't realize their small state is home to some of the nation's most diverse and beautiful landscapes. From the Kittatinny Mountains in the north to the beaches of Cape May in the south, New Jersey overflows with natural beauty, and Hiscano captures it all with unparalleled artistry in this magnificent collection of more than 100 photos taken over the past decade. Brief section openers describe each region's history, physical features, and ecological importance. In the spirit of Ansel Adams, who showed the world the previously overlooked magnificence of the Southwest, Hiscano allows us to view the state as never before, showing us its many splendors and varied seasons. His incomparable photographs are organized geographically-The Kittatinny Ridge and Valley, Highlands, Piedmont, Pine Barrens, and the shore. We view the state from its mountain tops and sand dunes. We see mighty oak trees and fragile wild roses. Waterfalls and beaver ponds. Snow-covered cedars and sun-drenched black-eyed susans. Sunrise and moonrise. Beauty in the most obvious and unexpected places. Hiscano's extraordinary portrayal of New Jersey in its most natural state also focuses our attention to the state's rapidly diminishing wildlands, and points out the urgent need to continue to preserve the landscape for future generations.

In Landscapes of Loss, Naomi Greene makes new sense of the rich variety of postwar French films by exploring the obsession with the national past that has characterized French cinema since the late 1960s. Observing that the sense of grandeur and destiny that once shaped French identity has eroded under the weight of recent history, Greene examines the ways in which French cinema has represented traumatic and defining moments of the nation's past: the political battles of the 1930s, the Vichy era, decolonization, the collapse of ideologies. Drawing upon a broad spectrum of films and directors, she shows how postwar films have reflected contemporary concerns even as they have created images and myths that have helped determine the contours of French memory. This study of the intricate links between French history, memory, and cinema begins by examining the long shadow cast by the Vichy past: the repressed memories and smothered unease that characterize the cinema of Alain Resnais are seen as a kind of prelude to a fierce battle for national memory that marked so-called rétro films of the 1970s and 1980s. The shifting political and historical perspectives toward the nation's more distant past, which also emerged in these years, are explored in the light of the films of one of France's leading directors, Bertrand Tavernier. Finally, the mood of nostalgia and melancholy that appears to haunt contemporary France is analyzed in the context of films about the nation's imperial past as well as those that hark back to a "golden age," a remembered paradis perdu, of French cinema itself.

Conflict Landscapes explores the long under-acknowledged and under-investigated aspects of where and how modern conflict landscapes interact and conjoin with pre-twentieth-century places, activities, and beliefs, as well as with individuals and groups. Investigating and understanding the often unpredictable power and legacies of landscapes that have seen (and often still viscerally embody) the consequences of mass death and destruction, the book shows, through these landscapes, the power of destruction to preserve, refocus, and often reconfigure the past. Responding to the complexity of modern conflict, the book offers a coherent, integrated, and sensitized hybrid approach, which calls on different disciplines where they overlap in a shared common terrain. Dealing with issues such as memory, identity, emotion, and wellbeing, the chapters tease out the human experience of modern conflict and its relationship to landscape. Conflict Landscapes will appeal to a wide range of disciplines involved in studying conflict, such as archaeology, anthropology, material culture studies, art history, cultural history, cultural geography, military history, and heritage and museum studies.