Rating: 
Summary: Good Book About A Crappy Place In An Okay State
Review: If you ever wondered why Secaucus NJ smells like a diaper truck parked in the sun on a hot summer day, this book will explain why. I was a native New Jerseyan until a year ago, and used to work occasionally in the Secaucus/Meadowlands/Giants Stadium area (Harmon Meadows Mall), although I lived about 30 min north of there (near Suffern NY). I didn't realize just how polluted the Meadowlands was until I read this book. It's a pretty good history of the area, its local characters, and the author's inexplicable obsession to explore the crappiest area I ever have had the misfortune to visit. Of course the book covers the Jimmy Hoffa connections, the Pulaski Skyway (definitely the most dismal aerial view of urban blight I've ever witnessed). Unfortunately, the first thing visitors usually see when they come to NJ is the Meadowlands, which do not represent NJ by a longshot. I enjoyed this book a lot, just don't judge the whole state by this one horrendous area.
Rating:
Summary: A book on New Jersey¿s Meadowlands? Why not!
Review: If you've never set foot in New Jersey's Hackensack Meadowlands - New York City's Okie trailer-like front yard - journalist Robert Sullivan's "The Meadowlands" is a suitable and whimsical introduction to that quirky splotch of urbanity-surrounded wilderness. For most readers, this boggy unfamiliar realm is how the author describes it: a nearly uninhabitable patch of land, perhaps only glimpsed through a plane window as you land at Newark Airport from the north, or from your car window as you soar over the grassy flat lands on the elevated N.J. Turnpike. Weaving legend and fact in sprightly and complimentary fashion, Sullivan effortlessly maintains his readers' focus on metropolitan New York's until-now anonymous and peacefully empty swampy morass. Meadowlands natives (including this reviewer) will appreciate the author's odd curiosity for his subject and his never-flagging enthusiasm for this sometimes unpleasant wasteland. His research into the history of these meadows - followed up with cheerfully ambitious field trips - produces absorbing tales of failed water and development projects, ferocious mosquitoes, and an occasionally off-balance bunch of characters who work in, study, and precariously live within this abused but beautiful sanctuary. There is a humorous encounter with a man of uncertain sanity swimming in the unknowable awfulness of Meadowlands water. (I can claim a similar questionable feat during a younger day!) This reviewer especially enjoyed those episodes which brought the author to areas of great familiarity: a closed slaughterhouse, Snake Hill, and various Secaucus haunts and waterways. Sullivan's search for the rubble of Manhattan's Penn Station is a worthy quest indeed; his joy at his discoveries will doubtless inspire more than a few natives (including this one) to follow in his footsteps. On balance, this is a recommended book for anyone remotely curious about the urban vs. environmental debate (although Sullivan treads a bit lightly he! re), or the interaction of massed population with an unpopulated natural habitat. For those who like mystery, among others there is the tragic tale of a detective's reluctant account of a murdered young woman. Her body was found in a remote Meadowlands location beneath the Pulaski Skyway - the mighty arching black steel bridgeway that spans the southern Meadowlands and two rivers in linking New York City and Newark. Improvements to the work might have included additional history and accounts of two of the most successful projects in the Meadowlands: the Giants Stadium sports complex completed in the early '80s, and the enormous Bulk Postal Facility built in the early 1970s. These undertakings demonstrated that big dreams (and big dollars) could overbuild the Meadowlands. In addition, the lone hand-drawn map at the front of the book scarcely provides the perspective, scale, or detail that could only enhance (particularly for the native) the adventures Mr. Sullivan describes so well. Today, further development in the form of a massive rail transfer station and office complex are set for groundbreaking in the Meadowlands; it remains despite its sogginess and uncertain environmental quality a land of promise and change. Looking ahead, Sullivan has set a high standard for anyone who will come along in, say, fifty or seventy-five years, to attempt a similar feat of imaginative writing about the lonely and perhaps vanishing "Meadowlands."
Rating: 
Summary: Terrific!
Review: No nickel analyses here. This was simply a great read-fascinating and evocative. A must for anyone who likes earlier McPhee.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining but Over-Hyped
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: fellow meadowlands traveller loves this book.
Review: Reading this book is a map of my neighborhood and all the 'stuff' that is buried in those meadows. Ive ridden my bicycle through the meadows for awhile now and they are an everpresent 'thing' in our subconscious. Sullivan has given me the material to re-stir my interest in 'stalking' as outlined in Peter Lang's book 'Suburban Disciplines' where students in Rome hiked the outskirts of the city recording all they saw and amassing a huge amout odatra that led to many art and architectural projects as well as the surfacing of the movment known as stalking. I believe these meadowalnds a perfect 'stalking' ground. This is truly an enjoyable book, the biography of a storied place.
Rating:
Summary: A Humorous Little Book about a Huge Dumping Ground
Review: Sullivan has written a very strange, tongue in cheek book about an area of the country that is perhaps the most abused and neglected in the entire country. The state of New Jersey led the nation in "superfund" cleanup sites last time I checked, but even by New Jersey standards the Meadowlands stands apart as a symbol of toxic dumping, abuse of nature and poor planning. Sullivan will have us believe that whenever he has some time on his hands while in New York, he packs a lunch, heads over the Hudson river into New Jersey and wanders around the swamp that is the Meadowlands. The book is amusing and usually informative- part environmental history, part ecology lesson, and part urban legend folklore. He recounts tales of reported Mob hits and labor disputes, tells of alleged buried pirate treasure, and explains how Hollywood "western" movies were filmed in the Meadowlands before there really was a movie industry in Hollywood. He embarks on some amusing canoe explorations of some of the more inaccessible areas of the swamp, with a companion who complains that he is likely "cutting ten years off his life" by paddling through the putrid swamp with Sullivan. Readers will learn probably more than they ever wanted to know about the composition and ecological breakdown of garbage dumps, including the creation of a slimy liquid called "leachate" which oozes out of the manmade hills and into virtual "moats", before blending into waterways such as the Hackensack River. All in all, while the book was often engaging and Sullivan's narrative mostly kept your interest, the book could've been better. There is little organization to the chapters, and while many of Sullivan's points are made with subtle irony (like the issue of whether his hotel room had a "view) he doesn't really have an overriding theme or purpose in telling his story. He seems more interested in finding cool stuff, like the remains of old Penn Station, foreign translations of Gone With the Wind or Jimmy Hoffa's body, than he is in efforts to restore or develop the meadowlands. The book jacket makes it seem like the book will explore various doomed efforts to develop areas of the Meadowlands, but all relatively recent efforts to do so were ignored in favor of lengthy accounts of turn of the century plans to alter the landscape and farm the land. There are apparently modern housing complexes and industrial parks there now, but we never hear from those people who live and work in the developed areas, only those who live in modified fishing shacks in the middle of the swamp. The book was an interesting diversion, especially for those like myself who drove by this region for many years, but ultimately the book seemed shallow and insignificant.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable, brief book of essays on the Meadowlands
Review: Sullivan takes a fun look at one of the most maligned regions of the U.S. - the New Jersey meadowlands. He definitely looks at it as an outsider (he is from the Pacific NW) with a mixture of repulsion and ivory-tower superiority, but with a bit of respect at times for the survival of the area and the people around it. Unlike John Quinn's _Fields of Sun and Grass : An Artist's Journal of the New Jersey Meadowlands_, which was written by a Meadowlands native and mainly deals with the economic and environmental legacy of the area, Sullivan mostly looks at the region from a sociological standpoint, stressing his encounters with the people in and around the meadowlands (and humanity's legacy there) rather than the actual natural area itself. If asked to choose, I personally preferred Quinn's work myself, but Sullivan's book is a worthy companion to Quinn, and I strongly recommend that you read both books to get a total picture of the meadowlands. My favorite chapter, in fact, dealt with Sullivan's quest for the remains of New York Penn Station, a neoclassical gem of a train station in Manhattan that was torn down in the name of "progress" in the 1960s and which is reported to be buried in the swamps of NJ (read _The Destruction of Penn Station_ by Peter & Barbara Moore for more on the station's demise). Sullivan tackles the project with one part archaeology and one part good detective work, and it reads like a charm. Sullivan thankfully has an engaging writing style, making the book read like a series of interconnected essays that briskly flies along like a phragmites reed bending in the wind. Since its written more for the general audience (who may not be as familiar with the meadowlands as us NJ denizens), give it a good read, and you won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable, brief book of essays on the Meadowlands
Review: Sullivan takes a fun look at one of the most maligned regions of the U.S. - the New Jersey meadowlands. He definitely looks at it as an outsider (he is from the Pacific NW) with a mixture of repulsion and ivory-tower superiority, but with a bit of respect at times for the survival of the area and the people around it. Unlike John Quinn's _Fields of Sun and Grass : An Artist's Journal of the New Jersey Meadowlands_, which was written by a Meadowlands native and mainly deals with the economic and environmental legacy of the area, Sullivan mostly looks at the region from a sociological standpoint, stressing his encounters with the people in and around the meadowlands (and humanity's legacy there) rather than the actual natural area itself. If asked to choose, I personally preferred Quinn's work myself, but Sullivan's book is a worthy companion to Quinn, and I strongly recommend that you read both books to get a total picture of the meadowlands. My favorite chapter, in fact, dealt with Sullivan's quest for the remains of New York Penn Station, a neoclassical gem of a train station in Manhattan that was torn down in the name of "progress" in the 1960s and which is reported to be buried in the swamps of NJ (read _The Destruction of Penn Station_ by Peter & Barbara Moore for more on the station's demise). Sullivan tackles the project with one part archaeology and one part good detective work, and it reads like a charm. Sullivan thankfully has an engaging writing style, making the book read like a series of interconnected essays that briskly flies along like a phragmites reed bending in the wind. Since its written more for the general audience (who may not be as familiar with the meadowlands as us NJ denizens), give it a good read, and you won't be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Mundane
Review: The author, Robert Sullivan, lives in Portland, Oregon, having grown up in the New Jersey - New York City area. By his own admission, he can "walk in the woods outside of the city where I ended up living and see beautiful trees and huge mountains topped with spectacular glaciers", an experience that only causes him to "miss the world's greatest industrial swamp". Thus, he "began taking cross-country trips to the Meadowlands and spending more and more time there". This book is a result of Bob's preoccupation. No, let's call it what it is - a curious obsession in need of some serious therapy. It's not that the book is poorly written or overly boring. It's just that it's about people, events and a place that are so excruciatingly MUNDANE. Get a life, Bob! There was absolutely nothing in the book that makes me want to get anywhere near the Meadowlands! Isn't that one of the motivations, overt or subliminal, for writing a travel essay about this, or any other, place? Please say you're not planning to make a travel documentary on the same subject!
Rating:
Summary: A great book
Review: The book knows its place and doesn't try to do too much, and in doing so it succeeds. It is the story of a very curious and imaginative guy exploring a complex and old place. It tells exactly what happened, without embellishment, and comes off as a sincere work. The stories and characters stand on their own.
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