Shop

Edited by Margaret Thomas Buchholz: In this curated selection of great writing from "The Sandpaper", "The Beachcomber", and other publications, the shared experience that is LBI is presented for locals and visitors alike.

By David Veasey:  From the seventeenth to the twentieth century, New Jersey's low-lying, sandy coast has been the site of thousands of shipwrecks as ships bound for New York City or Philadelphia foundered on its offshore shoals.  As coastal and international trade dramatically increased after the War of 1812, the federal government was forced to increase safety aids to mariners.  To ensure their safe passage, a series of lighthouses was built and the U.S. Life-Saving Service was created.  More than two centuries of the history of New Jersey's treacherous coast are preserved in Guarding New Jersey's Shore: Lighthouses and Life-Saving Stations.  Gathered from a wide array of sources, more than 200 historic photographs and fascinating, documented text combine to create the only illustrated history of the state's thirty-eight lighthouses and forty-one life-saving stations.  Sandy Hook, built in 1764, is the nation's oldest operating lighthouse. Navesink's Twin Lights was the first lighthouse to use electricity and was the home of Marconi's early radio experiments.  From the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, which once served as a lighthouse, to Cape May Point, and up the Delaware Bay and River, the fascinating story of protecting mariners from perils "Down the Shore" is presented and preserved in Guarding New Jersey's Shore: Lighthouses and Life-Saving Stations.  

By Joseph G. Bilby, James M. Madden and Harry Ziegler:  This book is a series of essays that deal with various little-known aspects of the state’s military experience, beginning with Henry Hudson’s first contact with New Jersey’s Native Americans in 1609 through the War for Independence up to and including the Cold War.  There are tales of generals and privates, soldiers and civilians, heroism and blundering, on the war front and the home front, that capture how the state’s citizens coped with the struggles of war.  

By Linda Barth:  Many Americans are familiar with Thomas Edison's "invention factory" in Menlo Park, where he patented the phonograph, the light bulb and more than one thousand other items.  New Jerseyans brought sound and music to movies and built the very first drive-in theater.  In addition to the first cultivated blueberry, tasty treats like ice cream cones and M&Ms are also Jersey natives.  Iconic aspects of American life, like the batting cage, catcher's mask and even professional baseball itself, started in New Jersey.  Life would be a lot harder without the vacuum cleaner, plastic and Band-Aids, and many important advances in medicine and surgery were also developed here. Join author Linda Barth as she explores groundbreaking, useful, fun and even silly inventions and their New Jersey roots.