The Winning Title for
One Book New Jersey 2004! is

THE PINE BARRENS
by John McPhee
1999 Pulitzer Prize Winner

See All the Voting Results Here ********** Some Web Links to Whet Your Appetite: ********** John McPhee's Homepage ********** The Work of John McPhee by James Schultz ********** The Pine Barrens.com ********** Piney Power ********** Pinelands Web Services of NJ **********

The Pine Barrens Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux Hardcover: 0-374-23360-8; $27.50US Paperback: 0-374-51442-9; $11.00US The pork was delicious and almost crisp. Fred gave me a potato with it, and a pitcher of melted grease from the frying pan to pour over the potato. He also handed me a loaf of bread and a dish of margarine, saying, "Here's your bread. You can have one piece or two. Whatever you want." Fred apologized for not having a phone, after I asked where I would have to go to make a call, later on. He said, "I don't have no phone because I don't have no electric. If I had electric, I would have had a phone in here a long time ago." He uses a kerosene lamp, a propane lamp, and two flashlights. He asked where I was going, and I said that I had no particular destination, explaining that I was in the pines because I found it hard to believe that so much unbroken forest could still exist so near the big Eastern cities, and I wanted to see it while it was still there. --The Pine Barrens There are five principal areas of New Jersey, but, to New Jersey's misfortune, most people think of the whole state in the image of the suburban-industrial corridor that runs between New York and Philadelphia. Northwestern New Jersey, in contrast, is rocky and glaciated farm country, where there are many large lakes and upland hardwood forests. Just across the corridor is a swath of loamy farmland that widens out in a southwesterly direction until it occupies a large part of the state's southernmost counties. A strip of oceanside communities runs down the coast. And what remains, in the low center of the state, is a region that has been known since the seventeenth century as the Pine Barrens. The term refers to the predominant trees in the vast forests that cover the area and to the quality of the soils below, which are too sandy and acid to be good for farming. Few people chose to settle there in the sixteen-hundreds, and a large part of the area has not significantly changed to this day. Although New Jersey has the heaviest population density of any state, huge segments of the pines--as the Pine Barrens are often called--have no people in them at all, and the few towns in the central forest are extremely small. Technically--that is, by their geological and botanical dimensions--the Pine Barrens cover eighteen hundred and seventy-five square miles, or about a fourth of the state. On all sides, however, developments of one kind or another have gradually moved in, so that now the central and integral forest is reduced to about a thousand square miles. This area is, nonetheless, much larger than most of the national parks in the United States, and is so vast that one almost has to go there and climb one of its fire towers in order to believe that so much wilderness exists where it does. The Pine Barrens are not only close to New York and to Philadelphia; they are exactly halfway and on a beeline between Boston and Richmond, and are thus at the absolute center of the great Eastern megalopolis. Reviews "Using his fine eye, great ear and good heart" (Newsday), McPhee "tells how this geographic anomaly has come to be, describes its people and their distinctive folklore, and captures something of the dreamlike quality of this incredibly quiet land in the midst of the noisy clutter of mechanical civilization" (Kansas City Star) An outstanding reading experience. --Natural History It will be a long time before another book appears to equal the literary quality and human compassion of this one. --The New York Times Book Review

We're looking forward to a FANTASTIC program in 2004!!

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