Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike, Second Edition

By Angus Kress Gillespie and Michael Aaron Rockland

Rutgers University Press

A twelve-lane behemoth cutting through the least scenic parts of the Garden State, the New Jersey Turnpike may lack the romantic allure of highways like Route 66, but it might just be a more accurate symbol of American life, representing the nation at both its best and its worst.

When Angus Gillespie and Michael Rockland wrote Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1989, they simply wanted to express their fascination with a road that many commuters regarded with annoyance or indifference. Little did they expect that it would be hailed as a classic, listed by the state library alongside works by Whitman and Fitzgerald as one of the ten best books ever written about New Jersey or by a New Jerseyan.

Now Looking for America on the New Jersey Turnpike is back in a special updated and expanded edition, examining how this great American motorway has changed over the past thirty-five years. You’ll learn how the turnpike has become an icon inspiring singers and poets. And you’ll meet the many people it has affected, including the homeowners displaced by its construction, the highway patrol and toll-takers who work on it, and the drivers who speed down its lanes every day.

Reviews
Author

Two American Studies professors from Rutgers University here show how the New Jersey Turnpike—that 'ugly icon,' America's 'widest and most traveled' road—has found its way into the minds, if not the hearts, of artists and drivers alike. In poet Allen Ginsberg, singer Bruce Springsteen, commuters and roadside homeowners lulled to sleep by its drone of traffic, this 12-lane asphalt monster has inspired powerful reactions, from admiration to anger. The authors consider the first asparagus patch plowed up to lay the road; the $70,000 salary [in 1989 dollars] a contemporary toll-taker can earn with hefty overtime; and the not infrequent lawlessness of the highway patrol. From the gray-flannel-suit diligence that built it, to the mixture of necessity, practicality and venality that maintains it, the New Jersey Turnpike proves to be an enthralling though unlikely subject. Publisher's Weekly

ANGUS KRESS GILLESPIE is a professor of American studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he teaches courses in historical and contemporary folklore. A Fulbright professor and a New York Times best-selling author, he has written on subjects ranging from skyscrapers to superhighways.

MICHAEL AARON ROCKLAND is a professor emeritus of American studies at Rutgers University. His many books include works of scholarship, memoir, journalism, and fiction, often focusing on New Jersey culture, such as The George Washington Bridge: Poetry in Steel and The Other Jersey Shore, both from Rutgers University Press.

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