Amazon.com (ISBN 0385495080, Paperback)

"I like to think of the Meadowlands as an undesignated national park," writes Robert Sullivan in his end-of-the-millennium take on Thoreau. In The Meadowlands, Sullivan does his Thoreauvian bean-counting in one of America's most infamous dumping grounds, the huge tract of marshy land just outside New York City that has withstood any and all attempts to subdue it with agriculture, industry, development, and an ever-shifting deluge of flotsam and jetsam. He may just be the first person in a century to willingly explore this fascinating but abused piece of real estate, and his investigation gives new meaning to intrepid reporting. By foot he tramps through the muck, and by canoe he navigates polluted rivers and marshes, noting the variegated species of trash and industrial cast-offs with as much zeal as he observes the surprisingly rich diversity of wildlife. Revealed in these stories is a landscape bursting with nature amid the curious man-made detritus of urban consumption. With only a touch of irony, the author refers to his stomping ground as "Big Sky Country, east," imagining he's "in a National Geographic special and visiting little tribes of people unknown to everyone else." He pursues the history of the Meadowlands with equal enthusiasm. Eccentric characters, tall tales, and scuttlebutt haunt the area, from the rumor that the land serves as the final resting place for Jimmy Hoffa (as well as a number of other Mafia hits) to the pitiable stories of the many dreamers who have sunk a fortune in the squelching mud. And throughout this smart, thoroughly researched adventure, Sullivan maintains a witty and lyrical voice that transforms his trip inside a nationally maligned place into a fun, informative romp.

Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0684832852, Hardcover)

Travel just five miles outside of New York City, venture off the crowded New Jersey Turnpike. and you will be surrounded by the Meadowlands, a much vilified but still untamed thirty-two-square-mile swamp that is home to rare birds and missing bodies, shiny corporate headquarters and the remnants of ancient cedar forests, tranquil marshes and burning garbage dumps. Robert Sullivan is this weird and wild place's unofficial naturalist, archeologist, and explorer, and here he reports back from the field. Revealing what he has found while traversing one of America's first -- and most fascinating -- frontiers.

A 1978 Federal Report described the Meadowlands as "a swampy mosquito-infested jungle...where rusting auto bodies, demolition rubble, industrial oil sticks and cattails merge in unholy, stinking union." But one man's trash is another man's treasure, and with incomparable wit and enthusiasm, Robert Sullivan reinterprets the reputation and legacy of an area considered by many to be one of the most disgusting in the country. He travels by canoe, bus, car, and foot to tour cities and swamplands and interview mayors, dump owners, and renegade mosquito-control officers. He describes the hideous pollution and the hidden natural wonders, the seedy motels and labyrinth highways, the local population and the indigenous, ubiquitous mosquitoes. The Meadowlands, he explains, is "a place that the forces of progress have perennially targeted but have never managed to completely control, a place that people rush past on their way to the rest of America." But Sullivan learns that, in fact, many things have been left behind here -- from garbage and treasure to the remains of crazy development schemes of generations past. Armed with pickax, shovel, and metal detector, he bravely sets out to find the two things believed to be dumped in the Meadowlands that particularly obsess him -- the elusive corpse of famed labor leader Jimmy Hoffa and Manhattan's once-glorious original Penn Station.

In the tradition of John McPhee and Ian Frazier, Robert Sullivan transforms the seemingly ordinary into the extraordinary with his sparkling literary style and superb sense of irony. Filled with eccentric characters and unforgettable stories, The Meadowlands is an ode to an overlooked American borderland -- a delightfully incongruous battleground marking the ongoing struggle between the forces of progress and nature.