The Ironbound district of Newark, New Jersey, has been known by many names over the years - Down Neck, the East Ward, the Meadows. There was even a time in the early days when locals called it Texas, owing to its remote setting in the marshes around the mouth of the Passaic River. Then everything changed. Newark boomed with industrial growth, and the Ironbound grew right along with it. The Morris Canal was completed in 1832, followed in short order by the first of several railways - the "iron" that eventually gave the neighborhood its name. Factories went up, immigrants poured in, and the Ironbound became a "district of industrial uproar ... its people ... a hodge-podge of nationalities ... speaking many old-world tongues." In these richly illustrated pages, Edward A. Jardim tells the story of the Ironbound with all the humanity and dynamism of the neighborhood itself - the shifting populations; the political intrigues; the fortunes and follies; the saints, sinners, and ordinary joes. It's a story of struggle and aspiration, of social change and economic upheaval, and, perhaps most important, of an urban community shaped by industrialization and its aftermath.

At a bus stop in a run-down New Jersey town, Darja, a Polish immigrant cleaning lady, is done talking about feelings; it’s time to talk money. Over the course of 20 years, and three relationships, Darja negotiates for her future with men who can offer her love or security, but never both. Award-winning playwright Martyna Majok’s IRONBOUND is a darkly funny, heartbreaking portrait of a woman for whom love is a luxury—and a liability—as she fights to survive in America.

The lands to the South are full of depraved women driven mad by forbidden sorcery. Now that sounds like fun for a barbarian from the Black Wolf Clan. The barbarians of the frozen north live to fight, drink, hunt, and screw, and Ymir is a true son of the Ax Tundra, until a demon curses him with magic. Orphaned by battle and banished by his tribe, Ymir heads south to Old Ironbound, a university where the rich and well-connected learn to master magic. Will Ymir's traditions and pride lead him to failure? Or will the centuries of knowledge-and the lusty human, elven, orcish, and dwarven noblewomen-give him limitless power? Either way, while his days are all about studying and scheming, his nights are filled with wild sex in the beds of beautiful women. Because in the lands of the South, there are few men, and those Southern women have needs. Disclaimer: Barbarian Outcast is a steamy slice-of-life harem adventure in a magic university on another world. The sex scenes are explicit but don't get in the way of the story as it slowly unfolds. Enter a brand-new world from Aaron Crash, the bestselling author of the American Dragon series.

Gulnash the Betrayer is coming to Old Ironbound, and he's coming for blood! Ymir just wanted to finish his second year, craft the next Akkiric Ring, and enjoy the summer in the company of his beautiful women. But Old Ironbound has been chosen as the location of the orc blood games, and all the ruling families of the surrounding kingdoms have come to make sure the worst scourge of the Blood Steppes, Gulnash, loses his life on the pit sands. If Ymir can win the day, the three major cities of the Blood Steppes are his by right. But Ymir's summer isn't all just about rogue orcs. A woman, long dead, haunts the halls, filled with a lust that defies imagination. A damaged mermaid princess is causing trouble, but this time, it's sexy trouble. And the leaders of the Midnight Guild finally reveal themselves...and strike! Ymir has never faced bigger challenges, and he'll have to brave new enemies and find new allies in a battle royale that will be both bloodier and more erotic than ever before. Disclaimer: Barbarian Gladiator is a steamy slice-of-life harem adventure in a magic university on another world. The story burns slow and hot, as hot as the depraved women in Ymir's life. The sex scenes are explicit. You've been warned. Enter a brand-new world from Aaron Crash, the bestselling author of the American Dragon series.

An ancient evil has come to Old Ironbound-is it a dragon or is it something else? Ymir has obtained six of the eight Akkiric rings-the rings that allowed Aegel Akkridor and his wives to live for a thousand years-but the more he studies, the closer he comes to learning the secret behind the great vempor's death. A secret that may mean death for Ymir and his wives as well. With a murder in Four Roads, his supply of xoca beans gone, new information about the Fayee, a demon king on the march, and rumors of a dragon, Ymir barely has time to please his women and flirt with the Princept of the school. Are these distractions from the destruction to come, or will Ymir need all the help he can get to face the darkness descending on Old Ironbound? Disclaimer: Barbarian Dragonslayer is a steamy slice-of-life harem adventure in a magic university on another world. The sex scenes are explicit but don't get in the way of the story as it slowly unfolds. Enter a dark fantasy world from the mind of Aaron Crash, the bestselling author of the American Dragon series.

There's something new, dark, and sweet at Old Ironbound Ymir made a vow to master magic and to take care of his women. To do that, he'll stay at the Majestrial Collegium Universitas, but he'll stay on his own terms. He has a new business idea that will make life at the college sweeter and keep all the scholars randy. Ymir's new business scheme requires a kitchen girl: the flirty dwarf named Toriah Welldeep, whose cheerful smile hides a broken heart. It's not all work, though, and he finds love, laughter, and passion with Jennybelle Josen and Lillee Nehenna, though the elf maiden is struggling to come to terms with the short lifespan of her new family, and something is giving Jenny nightmares. Could it be one of the new professors working at Old Ironbound? The incoming teachers are not what they seem. Is the Midnight Guild coming to finish what they started? Barbarians don't wait for assassins to murder them in their beds. Barbarians murder first. Disclaimer: Barbarian Assassin is a steamy slice-of-life harem adventure in a magic university on another world. The story burns slow and hot, as hot as the depraved women in Ymir's life. The sex scenes are explicit. You've been warned. Enter a brand-new world from Aaron Crash, the bestselling author of the American Dragon series.

The book that brings America's gateway city to life. Newark, New Jersey, is not only one of the oldest cities in the country but also a place that notable Americans from all walks of life have called home. Among the famous are Thomas Edison, Aaron Burr, Sarah Vaughan, Whitney Houston, Jerome Kern, Shaquille O'Neal, Queen Latifah, Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Jackie Gleason, Eva Marie Saint, Rod Steiger, Frankie Valli, Joe Pesci, and Wyclef Jean. Familiar names include the likes of Ed Koch, Dutch Schultz, Washington Irving, Fanny Brice, and Marvin Hagler. And then there are those who enjoyed their moment in the spotlight but have mostly faded from memory, like silent film star Harold Lockwood, Wimbledon champ Ted Schroeder, TV cop David Toma, and opera diva Maria Jeritza. For the first time, The Famous, the Familiar and the Forgotten brings together in a single volume these celebrated personalities and many more just like them in a salute to the city that gave them their start or helped them along the way to renown. Included with entries are address listings. So come take a journey beginning with its founding in 1666 to a city with a roster of remarkable residents as impressive as any place in the countryNewark, New Jersey, home to history.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Set in a close-knit Newark neighborhood during a terrifying polio outbreak in 1944, a “book [that] has the elegance of a fable and the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama” (The New Yorker)—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral. Bucky Cantor is a vigorous, dutiful twenty-three-year-old playground director during the summer of 1944. A javelin thrower and weightlifter, he is disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. As the devastating disease begins to ravage Bucky’s playground, Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such a pestilence can breed: fear, panic, anger, bewilderment, suffering, and pain. Moving between the streets of Newark and a pristine summer camp high in the Poconos, Nemesis tenderly and startlingly depicts Cantor’s passage into personal disaster, the condition of childhood, and the painful effect that the wartime polio epidemic has on a closely-knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children.

Why does a country with religious liberty enmeshed in its legal and social structures produce such overt prejudice and discrimination against Muslims? Sahar Aziz’s groundbreaking book demonstrates how race and religion intersect to create what she calls the Racial Muslim. Comparing discrimination against immigrant Muslims with the prejudicial treatment of Jews, Catholics, Mormons, and African American Muslims during the twentieth century, Aziz explores the gap between America’s aspiration for and fulfillment of religious freedom. With America’s demographics rapidly changing from a majority white Protestant nation to a multiracial, multireligious society, this book is an in dispensable read for understanding how our past continues to shape our present—to the detriment of our nation’s future.

In 1970, Kenneth Gibson was elected as Newark, New Jersey’s first African-American mayor, a position he held for an impressive sixteen years. Yet even as Gibson served as a trailblazer for black politicians, he presided over a troubled time in the city’s history, as Newark’s industries declined and its crime and unemployment rates soared. This book offers a balanced assessment of Gibson’s leadership and his legacy, from the perspectives of the people most deeply immersed in 1970s and 1980s Newark politics: city employees, politicians, activists, journalists, educators, and even fellow big-city mayors like David Dinkins. The contributors include many of Gibson’s harshest critics, as well as some of his closest supporters, friends, and family members—culminating in an exclusive interview with Gibson himself, reflecting on his time in office. Together, these accounts provide readers with a compelling inside look at a city in crisis, a city that had been rocked by riots three years before Gibson took office and one that Harper’s magazine named “America’s worst city” at the start of his second term. At its heart, it raises a question that is still relevant today: how should we evaluate a leader who faced major structural and economic challenges, but never delivered all the hope and change he promised voters?