A popular history of the garden state, better known today for the New Jersey Turnpike, this is the first one-volume history of the state in two-hundred years. Mr. Cunningham starts out with the Pre Cambrian Era when the land came into being, tells of the first settlers, the Lenni-Lenape (The Original People). Then came the Dutch and the Swedes, in turn subdued by the British, who received their come-uppance with the Revolution. The history of a colony becomes that of a state and the nation as the transportation revolution completely transformed New Jersey from 1830 to 1860; as the Civil War, industrialization, immigration, and (after a Victorian breather) two world wars became part of the New Jersey experience. Mr. Cunningham ends his book with the thought that ""perhaps, more than anything else, New Jersey deserves the sometimes used nickname: ""The Typical State."" Typical sales expectation: regional.