‘Baseball, Nazis & Nedick’s Hot Dogs: Growing Up Jewish in the 1930s in Newark’ by Jerry Izenberg
Rutgers grad Jerry Izenberg’s loving memoir of his home town of Newark fills in a lot of the holes for us Jersey Boys who grew up reading his sports reporting in the Newark Star-Ledger. Born down the shore in Neptune City 93 years ago, he’s still going strong writing words that leap off the page, and, boy, does this memoir ring true.
‘A Song For You: My Life With Whitney Houston’ by Robyn Crawford
Prior to 1985, when Whitney Houston busted out of Newark in her meteoric rise to the top of the charts, she palled around with Robyn Crawford, her best friend. In 2022, a feature film biography, ‘Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody,’ was well-received. It was based partially on Crawford’s very personal memoir recounting her life before Bobby Brown muddied the waters.
‘Ivy Hill’ by Arthur Ruben with Eleanor Cooney
Ivy Hill is in the Vailsberg section of Newark. Taken from true events like the 1967 race riots, Eddie is traumatized by the death of his dad, and alienated from the asshole his mom decides to marry. Music is his salvation and he forms a band, The Camaros…
Joel Selvin’s Blockbuster Jim Gordon Biography, ‘Drums & Demons,’ Set For February
He might have been the greatest rock drummer of them all. But now his name is hushed over, hardly mentioned, a mere footnote to rock history, and the book on his tumultuous life and horror ending had never been written. Leave it to Joel Selvin—who wrote the definitive Altamont book—to tackle this subject.
West Long Branch Author Writes The Book Beatle Fans Have Been Waiting For
Leave it to Kenneth Womack, 57, of West Long Branch, to write ‘Living The Beatles Legend: The Untold Story Of Mal Evans’ (Dey Street Books), a project that has had Beatle fans buzzing for years.
Linking Bruce & Billy: ‘Bridge and Tunnel Boys’ by Jim Cullen
‘Bridge & Tunnel Boys’ (Rutgers University Press), by Jim Cullen, subtitled ‘Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, and the Metropolitan Sound of the American Century,’ is a $28.50 262-page book detailing the similarities of two artists who grew up similarly influenced on those who came before them.
Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska,’ by Warren Zanes
“After decades in the world, Nebraska is one of those recorded works recognized for its simplicity but also for its density, its many-layeredness. It’s a record you come back to, a record with more than its share of mystery, a record that keeps mattering and keeps throwing off new meanings”—Author Warren Zanes
Jersey Bookshelf
Books by and about Jersey musicians