Customer Reviews

THE MEADOWLANDS: WILDERNESS ADVENTURES AT THE EDGE OF A CITY

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Being an avid kayaker, I've often wondered what it would be like to paddle the swampy marshlands of the Meadowlands. Riding on the NJ Turnpike, and amidst the backdrop of the Manahttan Skyline, the Meadowlands looks like an appealing natural area to paddle (..at least from a paddler's perspective). Although the area is historically notorious for being one of the most polluted in the state, I've often seen many wading birds feeding in the area so I figured "how bad could it be?"

Robert Sullivan answers this question in an entertaining account of his canoe expeditions in this area. His trek through the muck and mire lead him on searches for Jimmy Hoffa's body and other 'treasures'while also detailing the local history of the area and the mob related lore of the garbage and solid waste disposal industry. His graphic and detailed accounts of the garbage that have been dumped in the area would make any paddler seriously consider whether they should paddle it. At the same time, Sullivan has also created a curiosity which has motivated more people than ever before to pick up a paddle and check it out.

Beyond the humorous account of his adventure, this book is an easy read that makes us more aware of the vast natural area we have abused and taken for granted. Hopefully it will inspire people to assist restorative and preservation efforts of this area of great potential, preventing it from becoming a continued dumpsite or concrete jungle.

Highly readable and engaging, this book allows the reader to go with the pleasantly obsessed author on his many outings to the Meadowlands. We learn a lot, from the checkered past of its epicenter, the much-maligned city of Secaucus, to the true burial site of Penn Station, to the essential disappointment of the much-vaunted Pulaski Skyway. The book doesn't try to be comprehensive or terribly organized, but that's part of its quirky charm. This is a perfect book to take along on any kind of vacation or adventure. Humorous and good-spirited, the author maintains his informative yet comical composure throughout this delightful memoir/travelogue/adventure/nature book.

This is an enjoyable, easy-to-read book. Though many that live outside the New York Metro area would probably enjoy it, the millions that have passed through the Meadowlands on the way to work or to Giants Stadium to catch "The Boss" will most enjoy the nuggets of info in Sullivan's book.

The Meadowlands is a mix ecology, biology, folk tales, local history, and personal observations that seem to reflect the author's love/hate (mostly love) relationship with the meadowlands. Personally, I found the historical tidbits the most fascinating part of Sullivan's book. Like most people, I rub shoulders with a geographic area on an almost daily basis that I know little about. Why a certain place is named what it is? What was this place about one hundred years ago? The author relates the colorful history behind the town of Kearny and its namesake, General Philip Kearny, a one-armed (you will have to read the book to learn why he had one arm) general killed during the Civil War. Sullivan also relates the fascinating tale of Seth Boyden, a notable inventor from Newark, New Jersey. Now I know who Boyden Ave was named for. The Meadowlands has many of these gems imbedded between its covers.

At two hundred pages, Sullivan's book is a fairly quick read. For the millions of folks that rub elbows with The Meadowlands every year, I highly recommend this book. When you are passing Snake Hill while driving down the New Jersey Turnpike, you can turn to your passengers and say, "Let me tell you a little bit about that hill over there...."

The New Jersey Meadowlands is a large ecosystem of wetlands in northeast New Jersey three miles across the Hudson River from New York City. At one time the area was filled with spruce forests, but over the centuries the area has been used for a wide variety of agricultural, mining and industrial uses. Today a large portion has been developed with office, shopping and industrial buildings; vast areas were used for landfills and other areas suffer from environmental abuse. About 8,400 acres remain relatively pristine.

Robert Sullivan has spent many hours hiking, driving and kayaking through this area. His book needed the firm hand of a strong editor, but nonetheless there are treasures here.

Sullivan opens his book on a bus that has left the Lincoln Tunnel for Secaucus, and he describes the landscape as he travels. He writes that in airplanes he can see taking off from Newark Airport "people have packed their trunks or their backpacks or their carry-on luggage with travel books or maybe brand-new water-repellent hiking clothes or Power Bars and polypropylene underwear, and they are heading west to travel and explore. But I am creeping slowly back into the East, back to America's first West -- making the reverse commute to the already explored land that has become, through negligence, through exploitation and through its own chaotic persistence, explorable again."

"Snake Hill is cragged and denuded, a 150-foot tall, all-but-removed casualty of a gravel company's demolition work. But what's left of it is still the only real hill in the Meadowlands. The rest of the hills are garbage hills, the Meadowlands having once been the largest outdoor garbage can in the world. Snake Hill is to the Meadowlands what the Empire State Building is to New York or the Space Needle to Seattle, only instead of looking out on a living city, it looks out on the world's great postindustrial landscape. If I climb leisurely, it takes about an hour to reach the top, and when I get there, I look out at the not-quite-drained glacial lake that makes up the Meadowlands, and I marvel."

This is a book best enjoyed in small bits, perhaps with on a trip to explore some part of the Meadowlands.

The New Jersey Audubon Society has produced a wonderful guide book called "New Jersey Birding and Wildlife Trails, Meadowlands and More." The 72 page guidebook is produced in both an English and in a Spanish version, is printed on glossy paper with spiral binding, and contains many full color illustrations, excellent maps, and detailed information on access points and sights of interest.

The guidebook is absolutely free from New Jersey Audubon, Meadowlands Liberty, Hackensack Riverkeeper or New Jersey Trails. There is no better way to explore the Hackensack River Watershed than with this guide book in hand, and Robert Sullivan's book in your backpack.

Robert C. Ross 2008

I enjoyed this light set of anectdotes about urban North Jersey's backyard. As I child I'd often make similar explorations in the 'meadows', so Sullivan's stories remind me of wonderful times. (Of course, his explorations are like that of Sir Hillary's compared to my own forays.) The writing is easily digestible, with each anectdote standing alone - if you prefer to read in smaller sessions. I was quite happy to read all his adventures at once. Anyone with an interest in the outdoors, and even an urban local like myself can learn a lot from this book - including an interesting mystery or two. I may dig out my waders and start my explorations again, just to find some of the treasures he writes about.

A great read that brings the Meadowlands to life. Sullivan's writing draws you in, inviting you on his explorations--it's never ponderous. I especially appreciate his ability to blend the historical with the human: We learn how politics and people have affected the Meadowlands over the years. Note: Although other reviewers express the wish for a "true" map in the book, I got a kick out of the informal one that appears opposite the title page: It's a perfect match for the book's tone. I'm on the search for more writing by this author, and--even more telling--I'll probably head over to the Meadowlands next time I'm in NYC.

Perhaps it was the aggressive marketing, but I found myself disappointed with the book. There is much of interest and entertainment to be found here, but a number of vignettes (including the search for the ruins of Penn Station) came off oddly anti-climactic (perhaps because so little of the station still remains to be found) and the technique of the book (intro of a Meadowlands feature/area and a quirky personality to go with it) grows repetitive, so that by the end of the book one starts to know what to expect.

There are a number of gaps in coverage, including construction of the Meadowlands complex, and there is nary a word about the extensive network of rail lines criss-crossing the marshes.

The book would benefit enormously from some maps and photographs.

Nice read if somebody lends you the book, but The Meadowlands may not be worth the price of a new hardcover.

Robert Sullivan's "The Meadowlands" is a fun, fast read, but in one area that I know quite well -- the construction of what is now called the Pulaski Skyway, and the labor war and murder trial that bloodied its history -- Sullivan's account is so riddled with errors that it leaves me reluctant to accept the rest of the book on face value. Most embarrassingly, Sullivan confuses Sigvald Johannesson, one of the key engineers on the Skyway project, with Sven Hedin, a Swedish geographer who was exploring Central Asia during the same period. He also offers an anecdote about a restaurant bill that anyone above a certain age will recognize as a particularly moldy ethnic joke. Speaking as someone who grew up in Bergen County on the fringe of the Meadowlands -- and who went to school with boys whose fathers regularly took them trapping and prospecting for scrap metal in the big swamp -- I recognize very little of the region in these tales of encounters with oddball locals, written in that faux naif style so beloved of New Yorker writers. A far superior book about the region is John R. Quinn's "Fields of Sun and Grass."

Sullivan does a great job of revealing the beauty and promise of an area hugely blighted by urban and industrial development, offers an example of how we might look more closely at many things, and highlights how careless we can be in destroying our natural environment...

I loved this book. The author writes in an engaging, informative style. He takes a subject matter which, at first, appears to be fairly bland and uninspiring, and turns it into a "can't stop 'till it's done " winner- like taking a jar of off-the-shelf Aunt Millie's-type tomato sauce and adding fresh ingredients to give the eater/reader a whole new perspective.