Fresh Jersey: Stories from an Altered State

by Mike Kelly

For over a decade, ordinary people, doing ordinary things, have given Mike Kelly the opportunity to inform and entertain readers of the New Jersey-based newspaper The Record . To Kelly, the story is in the people--and in the lessons that their experiences can teach the rest of us about living, dying, laughing, and loving. In this collection of his columns, Kelly pays tribute to those people as he shares their story with a wider audience. Kelly charts the rise and fall of local, state, and national politicians. He searches for Jimmy Hoffa's legendary burial place in Giants Stadium, and he recalls an afternoon spent with a three-year-old AIDS victim. All together, these individual stories of hope and sorrow, of hardship and happiness, transcend their local origins and tell a larger story of how Americans live and perceive themselves.

Genres: Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2000

Reviews

[Mark NP · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of artivles from a NJ columnist was like a time capsule look into the local headlines of the 80s and 90s. Local heroes and villains, slice of life features, and memoirs paint the day to day of NJ in the 90s. National news events were analyzed from a local persepctive, too. From the AIDS outbreak to OJ Simpson trial to the Clinton impeachment, everything seemed familiar, and yet very distant. For those of us who remember the 90s (I was young but I was there), this book is a good reminder of the way things were. I mostly read it in the bathroom.