New Book Releases

Although West Orange is best known for Thomas Edison, there is much more to this New Jersey town than its famous inventor. Through vintage postcards, West Orange explores the town's history from the days of cable cars that once climbed the mountain to the long-gone amusement park at Crystal Lake. Postcards illustrate how Llewellyn Park and Eagle Rock share a common beginning and West Orange once had two train stations. The familiar roads of home come alive as images reveal West Orange's rich history.

Founded in 1666 by stalwart Puritan settlers along the Passaic River, Newark has evolved over the centuries from an ecclesiastical hamlet into a metropolis renowned as a center of industry and opportunity. The history of Newark is an engaging tale of American ambition, resolve, innovation, and spirit, propelling the city into a premier role on the world's economic and cultural stage. From Newark's initial settlement to the present, this
comprehensive volume chronicles the fascinating story of the city's past, bringing to life many of the events and characters that shaped its unique heritage and traditions. Readers will journey across epochs of change, on horseback and trolley, in stagecoach and automobile, on plank roads and mammoth cement turnpikes, and will experience firsthand the community's conflicts and developments, from its days as a strategic crossroads for both Continental and British troops during the American Revolution to its elevation as an industrial hub for businesses in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. Touching upon its human face, Newark, New Jersey recognizes an assortment of religious, political, and cultural figures and leaders, such as the famed Reverends Abraham Pierson Sr. and Aaron Burr Sr., the imaginative entrepreneurial pioneer Seth Boyden, and the quintessential American inventor Thomas A. Edison, and details their impact on the growing community.

The College of Saint Elizabeth is the first permanent four-year liberal arts college for women ever established in New Jersey. In over two hundred
photographs, many of them published here for the first time, we can follow the story of the first hundred years of this Catholic institution, founded in 1899 by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth.
Today the founding organization continues to sponsor and participate in the growth and development of the college. As we look back with them over their first century, we can see the progress achieved through dedication to women's education and the full participation of women in society. The establishment of graduate departments in education, health care, theology, and management has helped establish Saint Elizabeth as a strong, growing community of learning in the Catholic liberal arts tradition.

The twentieth century can truly be said to have been America's century. As the nation reached the position of world leader, her towns and cities changed at an unprecedented pace. With the approach to the millennium, the topic of change is on everyone's mind--how our communities and lifestyles have changed over the past century, and how we can endeavor to preserve the past while facing the future
in which the world seems to change ever faster. The American Century series documents and celebrates our most recent history--featuring images of faces and places that were photographed within living memory and yet already seem to belong to a long-past era.

Branch Brook Park, located in Newark, was America's first county park. The park was established in 1895 as the cornerstone of the Essex County Park System. The vision for Branch Brook Park came in 1867, when Newark park commissioners retained Olmsted, Vaux, and
Company to identify a site for a park in the city. That vision matured into a reality that is now, 140 years later, woven into the urban experience of Newark and its neighboring towns. The significance of
Branch Brook Park has been nationally recognized with its placement on the New Jersey and National Registers of Historic Places. Home to the Newark Cherry Blossom Festival, organized long-distance runs
and bicycle races, picnics, the Chrysanthemum Show, the New Jersey Symphony Under the Stars, boating on the lake, prom pictures, and sports activities from baseball to bocce to soccer and tennis, Branch Brook Park remains a constant source of great beauty.

Georgian Court University is a pictorial history of the university from its founding in 1908 by the Sisters of Mercy under the title College of Mount St. Mary. Originally located in Plainfield, the school relocated in 1924 to a former country estate of millionaire George Jay Gould in Lakewood. Retaining the estate title at the request of the Gould family, the Sisters of Mercy renamed the school Georgian Court College. With continuous growth of enrollment, programs, technology, and personnel, the college was designated Georgian Court University by the state in 2004. This centennial book, using the mission of the university as its theme, captures the traditional commitments of the university: a comprehensive liberal arts program in the Roman Catholic tradition; an environment conducive to the cultural, social, and spiritual growth of the entire university community; the core values of justice, respect, integrity, compassion, and service; and a special concern for women.