Overview

In this time of ever-shorter news stories telling us everything that’s wrong with the world, it’s a nice change of pace to read about someone like Felix Addeo, who takes time out of his busy schedule to teach middle school kids what it’s like to be an accountant. Or biomedical engineer Lois Ross, who twice a year leads a group of volunteers to clean up a local pond. These are just two of the ordinary, yet extraordinary, people profiled in this collection of feature articles by New Jersey reporter Al Sullivan. Through richly detailed stories-a kind of writing that has all but disappeared from our local newspapers-about small-town people in extraordinary situations, Sullivan depicts the characters that enliven life in the Garden State. While his stories always have a strongly local feel, each contains an element of the universal that draws in readers whose interest lies not in a specific location, but in the diverse experiences and stories of people who live in and shape a community. Sullivan has written about people from nearly every walk of life, from minister to prostitute, from jail warden to undercover cop. Everyday People takes readers to the funeral of AIDS activist Ronald West, Jr., and to the office of James Delson, owner and operator of Jersey City’s Toy Soldier Company. You’ll follow Sullivan from the Hoboken workshop of violin maker Jon Van Kouwenhoven to the rooftops that are the “office” of chimney sweep Ron Simpson. You’ll go on a ride with the Glen Ridge Volunteer Ambulance Squad and along the Hackensack River with Captain Bill Sheehan, founder of the Hackensack Estuary and River Tender’s Corporation, which monitors the river’s ecology. You don’t have to live in New Jersey to recognize the people in Sullivan’s stories. They are the librarians and tax assessors, attorneys and hotdog vendors, firefighters and bee keepers, poets and politicians, that make every American town special. In Everyday People, Sullivan records their stories for us all to read and remember.

Full Product Details

Author:   Al Sullivan
Publisher:   Rutgers University Press
Imprint:   Rutgers University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9780813529509

ISBN 10:   0813529506
Pages:   264
Publication Date:   01 June 2001
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable  
The supplier advises that this item is temporarily unavailable. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out to you.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments PART ONE Memories of War and Peace - Helping Our Own Walking in the Name of Jesus They Call Him Mr. Sam A Man of Spirit One Hundred and Four Years Young Not Just a Caregiver Ten Velde's World An Amazing Moment in Time A Letter from the Past A Big Part of Secaucus What a Lucky Man A Model World Toy Soldiers March On High-Seas Romance A Taste of Ireland A Brief Stopover Call It Kismet Sweeping Hudson's Chimneys Haunted No More A Sense of Style Listen to the Music PART TWO The Nature of Things On Call Protecting the Protectors Saying Good-Bye Three Faces of a Cop A Sense of Integrity Facing the Outside Down and Out in Hoboken Hero in the Emergency Room Mistress of Modern Gothic Images of Lisa The Seduction of Howard Stern A Summit of Hope Buzzing about Bees In Search of Skunk A Little Tender, Loving Care See Ya Later, Alligator Beeping One for the Record Books A Natural Haven in the Heart of Bloomfield The Hackensack Gets a Keeper An Organized Man From Out of Obscurity A Matter Bigger Than Books Not a Taxing Job The Human Side of Legislation PART THREE The Arts and Sciences Blast from the Past Stretching Out the Walls of Education Rocket Man More Than Numbers A Twist of Fate Moving On A Global Perspective The End of a Double Life Metaphors of Life Building Community A Walk through Hell A Breakfast to Remember Shooting for the Moon Granting a Wish A Drive through Secaucus's Past Not Just Luck Behind the Veil A Dual Identity All the World Loves Ollie A Familiar Setting Chapter and Verse Poetry in the Woods Final Chapter By the Time I Got to Woodstock... Index 

Reviews

Sullivan characterizes his book as a brand of new journalism blending newspaper and novel writing, which he affirms is the dream projector any weekly newspaper reporter. Sullivan s profiles are categorically grouped, and the first third of the book contains numerous profiles of elderly people, nostalgically recollecting their departed way of life, like the story of an aging honeybee keeper slowly forced to surrender his pastime.--Hudson Reporter Everyday People features 70 profiles of individuals Sullivan has encountered during his years as a beat reporter for the Hudson Reporter Associates and the Worrall Community Newspapers in Bloomfield. . . . A lot of the stories in the book are with older people who represent a way of life that is no longer around, [Sullivan says].--Jersey City Reporter Like the personalities portrayed in his book, Sullivan s life is the stuff that provocative profiles are made of.--Weehawken Reporter Praise for Everyday PeopleSkunk hunters, tax assessors, riverkeepers and social workers: Al Sullivan tells the stories of his ordinary people extraordinarily well.--Peter Genovese author of Jersey Diners and The Great American Road Trip: U.S. 1, Maine to Flori Sullivan has lived every journalist s dream: find real people and tell their stories. As a reporter and writer, he explores the human side, which is, after all, the only side that matters.--Mark Di Ionno author of New Jersey s Coastal Heritage and A Guide to New Jersey's Revolutionar

Praise for Everyday PeopleSkunk hunters, tax assessors, riverkeepers and social workers: Al Sullivan tells the stories of his aeordinaryAE people extraordinarily well.--Peter Genovese author of Jersey Diners and The Great American Road Trip: U.S. 1, Maine to Flori Sullivan has lived every journalistAEs dream: find real people and tell their stories. As a reporter and writer, he explores the human side, which is, after all, the only side that matters.--Mark Di Ionno author of New JerseyAEs Coastal Heritage and A Guide to New Jersey's Revolutionar

Sullivan has lived every journalistAEs dream: find real people and tell their stories. As a reporter and writer, he explores the human side, which is, after all, the only side that matters.--Mark Di Ionno author of New Jersey 's Coastal Heritage and A Guide to New Jersey's Revolutionar

Author Information

Al Sullivan is a staff writer for the Hudson Current and the Secaucus Reporter. He has won a number of awards from the New Jersey Press Association and the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalism.

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