Beyond the Palace - Asbury Park Music Scene

Beyond the Palace. By Gary Wien. (Trafford Publishing, 2006, 400 pages, $26). Asburymusic.com. “The Struggling City along the Jersey Shore music history unlike any other.” A Jersey guy and publisher of Backstreets Magazine writes about the vibrant Asbury Park music scene. And not just the Stone Pony and the Boss, but he also gets in hip scenes like the Upstage, Fastlane, Student Prince, Sunshine In, Jim’s, Harry’s Roadhouse, the Casino, the Palace, and the bands that played there - South Side, Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom, Jody Joseph & the Average Joes, John Eddie, the Bongos, David Sancious, Well of Soul, the Whirling Derrishes and Everlounge, Fran Smith, the Shakes, James Deeley & the Valiants, Dramarama, Red House and the T Birds Café & the Saint. Billy Hector, who you will hear from again, gets a whole chapter. With 70 classic pix by Debra L. Rothenberg.

Six Frigates - The Epic History of the Founding of the Navy

Six Frigates – The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy. By Ian W. Toll. (W.W. Norton & Company, NY, 2006, 561 pages, $28 hardbound). Toll examines the early history of the Navy and the country, through six battleships ordered built by President Washington in 1794. Three of the first officers to be commissioned to man them were Charles Stewart, Richard Somers and Stephen Decatur, three midshipmen would become bodacious, swashbuckling pirate fighters who would set the tone and style for all special op warriors.

A Call to the Sea - Captain Charles Stewart

A Call to the Sea – Captain Charles Stewart of the USS Constitution. By Claude G. Berube and John A. Rodgaard (Potomac Books, Inc. DC, 2005, 299 pages, $35 hardbound). This highly regarded biography of Charles Stewart, the neglected musketeer of the Somers/Decatur/Stewart schoolmate triage who laid swath to the Pirates of the Barbary Coast, ay Matey, Arrrrgggggg!!!!

New Jersey Firsts

New Jersey Firsts – The Famous, Infamous, and the Quirky of the Garden State. By Harry Armstrong and Tom Wilk. (Camino Books, Inc., Phila., 1999, 157 pages, $10.) These seasonsed newmen, Harry of Golden Times and Tom of Courier Post, lay it all out, detailing why New Jersey’s slogan should be just Jersey First. First tar pit, first toxic dump, first tourist trap, etc.

It Happened In New Jersey

It Happened In New Jersey – Fascinating Stories that helped make New Jersey what it is today. By Fran Capo. (Twodot, Globe Pequot Press, Connecticut, 2004, 211 pages, $10). This New York comic plays it straight, thinks New Jersey has a characterizable identity, gets lost in North Jersey and even had to go out of state to get published.

Revolutionary War Trail

Revolutionary War Trail – A Guide for Families and History Buffs. By Mark Di Ionno.

(Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 2003, 224 pages, $20 paperbound). This day trip guide to New Jersey’s revolutionary past cuts through the crossroads of the war for independence, with directions, photos and descriptions of some of this region’s unique historical attributes like the Indian King Tavern, the Battle of Chestnut Neck and little known places of historical renown.

Someone Would Have Talked: The Assassinatoin of JFK

Someone Would Have Talked: The Assassination of JFK and the Conspiracy to Mislead History (JFK Lancer Pub., 2006, 620 pages, $35). By Larry Hancock. Someone did talk: Atlantic City Ducktown native John Martino, an electronics casino security specialist in Havana, did hard time as spy in Castro’s prisons before being feed to participate in anti-Castro operations. Consorting with his friends, like John Rosselli, allowed Martino to predict the time and place of the assignation of the President. Now Martino’s son Dr. Edward Martino says its time to come clean, and Larry Hancock’s book takes us closer to the truth about the JFK’s murder than ever before.

The Last Good Time - Skinny D'Amato & the 500 Club

The Last Good Time – Skinny D’Amato, the Notorious 500 Club, and the Rise & Fall of Atlantic City. By Jonathan Van Meter (Three Rivers Press, NY, NY, 2003, 296 pages, $15, paperbound). JVM’s puts you in a booth at the Five in its prime, and uses the famed club as mirror of the city in decline in old Atlantic City. With photos.

Grace Kelly - A Life In Pictures By Tommy Hilfiger

Grace Kelly – A Life In Pictures – With an Introduction By Tommy Hilfiger. (Pavillion Books, 2007). This coffee table book is full of pix of the former Ocean City Chatterbox waitress, Academy Award winning actress and iconic princess we remember as the girl next door. Fashion Tommy Hilfinger picked the cover shot from a 1954 Life Magazine, and the other photos capture Grace in her prime. With the 25^{th anniversary of her death, get ready for a media bliz on Grace Kelly.}

Winning Right - Campaign Politics and Conservative Policies by Ed Gillespie

Winning Right – Campaign Politics and Conservative Policies – By Ed Gillespie (Threshold Editions, Simon & Schuster, NY, 2006; 287 pages, $26). The story and advice of a national Republican power player, hardball regular and political strategist who grew up in South Jersey (Browns Mills, Pemberton HS). Starting out parking cars in the Senate lot Gillespie worked his way up the political power chain as one of Karl Rove’s young protégés, to become the linchpin - Chairman of the Republican Party. Now a West Wing troubleshooter, special counsel to the President, Gillespie is still in the game, and his book lays out how to play the Conservative Republican way. [Read more…..]

Gay Talese's A Writers's Life Revisited

Gay Talese's A Writer's Life Revisited.

It was hard to get a make on Gay Talese's A Writer’s Life (Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 2006, 430 pages, $26 Random House Audio Books) when it first came out a few years ago, but now, in contemplative retrospect, it finds it literary niche.

(It must be) now available in paperback, and while the Chinese soccer heroine seemed a bit out of place a few years ago, the Bejing Olympics bring the topic back to the table, and in this perspective, it comes across much more appealing.

After exposing the Mafia in "Honor thy Father," mainstream media in "The Kingdom and the Power," American sexual morals in "Thy Neighbor's Wife" and his own family in "Unto the Sons," Ocean City’s native son purges his culinary soul in this literary moveable feast.

Talese didn't know if his next book should be a continuation of his reflection on his family history, the restaurant industry or Olympic soccer, about which he admits little interest. So this book is about all three. In searching for the spirit of a young Chinese soccer player, Talese is sidetracked into musing over fine wine and dinners at a succession of NYC restaurants, some of which occupied the same location.

Liu Ying is the young girl, a Chinese soccer player who misses a crucial overtime kick in a sudden death World Cup play off game, an event that Talese witnessed on TV while pondering his next assignment at his home in the Ocean City Gardens.

Talese was struck by the fact Liu Ying missed, and wondered what the repercussions would be at home, and what it was like to live and play soccer in China, questions that Talese carried back with him to his New York City apartment, and while dining out at various culinary establishments.

As Talese admits in this semi-tell-all auto-biography, his mother was all business when it came to the dress and tailor shop they operated on Asbury Avenue, where they lived upstairs but seldom ate at home. Unlike your traditional Italian kitchen with sauces on the stove all the time, Gay and his father often went out to eat at restaurants, which gave Gay a taste for such places.

Over the years, while he was dodging mobsters, reporting for the New York Times, stalking but failing to interview Frank Sinatra, hobnobbing with Hugh Hefner and driving around in his classic fire engine red TR-3 convertable, Talese was thinking about writing a book about the restaurant industry, and kept dubious notes in a special file, but never got around doing it. Well this is it, at least part of it is.

While he also spends time at "21," Elaines, Sardi's and other well known city joints, Talese seemed to always come back to 206 East 63rd Street. The Uptown scene must be located somewhat convenient to Talese's New York pad, because he patronized the place over a period of decades as it went through changes in ownership and styles - Le Premier, Gnolo, The Bisro Pascal, and giving him a place to hang his hat and draw on the evolution of one place.

Of course the owners of these semi-permenant places, Elaine Kaufman, Henri Soale, Sirio Maccioni, are all interesting people, as are the lesser known personalities who own and operate (not always the same person) seemingly popular restaurants, but evenually failed businesses.

While writing a book on the restaurant industry was a long-range project, he did take a six-figure advance for a follow up to his family history "Unto the Sons," but that was years overdue and he had taken up other interests, including the tragic Chinese soccer heroine Liu Ying. Talese wrote querries to some editors he thought would be interested in his perspective, but when there were no takers, he decided on a whim to fly to China and find out what became of Liu Ying.

Restaurants come and go, change names, motifs and menus, so what I want to know is what new restaurant now occupies the 206 E. 63rd St. where Talese often dined, and is it any good?

"Without contradictions, nothing would exist." - Mao

David Talbot's Brothers - The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years

David Talbot's Brothers - the Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (Free Press, Simon & Schuster, 2007).

Gallant John Barry

Gallant John Barry by William Clark Bell (Macmillan, NY, 1938).

This was a very elusive book, but I finally got a copy from my usual source for rare publications, Bob Rufalo at Princeton Antique Books in Atlantic City. He found one on the internet that was going for $200 and so I traded him some copies of my 300 Years at the Point. What a deal.

The book, complete with dust jacket, is a fine bio that Macmillan should republish, given the continued interest in Barry, him having been the subject of a recent Congressional resolution honoring his birthday.


Clark provides a great rundown of Barry's career, and his exploits, not only on the high seas, but on land as an aide de camp to General Washington before the battle of Trenton, and in assisting in the roundup of the Salem cattle drive that helped feed the Revolutionary army at Valley Forge.


For me, this book is extremely important in detailing Barry's relationship to Richard Somers, as well as the other kids on the block - Decatur, Stewart and Russ. It positively seals their prior association before the Navy commissions, but doesn't answer the ultimate question of whether the Commodore was also John Barry the school master.

Clark establishes Barry's assocation with the Irish Hibernian society, and Joshua Humphries, the shipbuilder.

It also establishes the fact that while Barry married money, the estate was tied up in court, and that Barry's revolutionary war salary was slow in being paid, so he was in need of an independent salary that the school could have arranged. Since Barry was friends with the school's owner Bishop White and those Federalists pushing for a new Navy, perhaps it was set up for Barry to work part time at the school as a teacher of young men until the Congress approved the budget for the new Navy? This "Free Academy" was, after all, free because tuition and salaries were paid by donations from the pulpet and wealthy parishioners, some of whom were supporters of the new Navy.

Knowing Barry was number one on the list to be made an officer once the Navy was approved, they could have taken him on as a teacher until the USS United States was launched and made sea worthy.

That this would take years was a matter of politics and fate, as there was a rider in the Congressional approval of the new Navy, which cut off funds if a treaty was established with the Barbary Pirate states - whose activites in the Med provided the pretext for the Barbary War. When the treaty was established, the money from Congress was cut off, and not reestablished until the French started commandeering US ships. Our former friend continued hostilities with England after the US won independence, so the French started picking on us too. Forcing Congess to continue building the new frigates and finally establishing the Navy Department.

Once Captain John Barry's salary from the Navy began, the schoolmaster John Barry suddenly ceased receiving his pay and disapears.

In addition, Clark makes mention of a center city residence maintained by Barry, besides his home Strawberry Hill - three miles north of center city. This residence, between third and fourth streets, is exactly where the Free Academy was located, and where a small residence was maintained for John Barry, school master.

So if my thesis, that Captain John Barry served as a Philadelphia Academy school master after Revolution and leaving the maritime trade, and before he was commissioned the first flag officer and took command of the USS United States.

If so, then his being school master of Somers, Stewart, Decatur and Russ before he became their senior officer in the Navy, firmly esablishes Commodore John Barry, as others have unofficially refered to him as, "the father of the U.S. Navy."