Edison's Environment & From Ink on Paper to the Internet Published

The New Jersey Heritage Press is pleased to announce the publication of Edison's Environment: Invention and Pollution in the Career of Thomas Edison by George J. Hill, M.D. The release of Edison's Environment follows the publication last month of From Ink to the Internet: Past Challenges and Future Transformations for New Jersey's Newspapers by Jerome Aumente.

Edison's Environment is the first book to offer a comprehensive look at Edison's impact on the environment in more than a dozen sites in New Jersey, from his famous workshops in Menlo Park and West Orange to his little-known iron mining operation on Sparta Mountain, his cement factory in Warren County and the laboratory in Silver Lake where an Edison company was fined for wantonly dumping carbolic acid into a brook in a residential neighborhood.

"Edison saw himself as a benefactor of humanity. But in this startling new look at Edison, Dr. George J. Hill suggests that the price of invention was serious industrial pollution. Meadows, ponds and forest disappeared to make way for Edison's laboratories, factories and mining operations, water and soil pollution were rife, andthe health consequences for workers and residents were severe." Mark Edward Lender, Ph.D., Kean University History Department chair

From Ink on Paper to the Internet not only delivers the first comprehensive history of the New Jersey newspaper industry, but also explores the unprecedented challenges that newspapers face in the Internet era. Professor Aumente profiles the history and competitive situation of every daily newspaper and many of the major weeklies in New Jersey, tracing the transformation from family ownership to large state and national chains. His interviews with dozens of publishers, editors and reporters offer a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse into serious investigative reporting and “war stories” straight out of The Front Page.

“This book vividly captures the challenges and excitement of New Jersey’s daily and community newspapers over the centuries, and what they are doing today to reinvent themselves in the digital world of the Internet. It is a story not only of survival, but how newspapers here and nationally can achieve a leadership position in the new media terrain that is taking shape.” John J. O’Brien, Executive Director, New Jersey Press Association

For further information or to contact the New Jersey Heritage Press, call 973 292-7571, fax 973 292-7572, email njheritagepress@aol.com, or write to New Jersey Heritage Press, 10 Hunter Drive, Morristown, NJ 07960.

(full story...)