New Jersey in the Jazz Age

The Garden State After the Great War

Post-World War I life was dramatically different for New Jersey than it had been prior to the war. By 1920, the war was over for the Europeans, but it was still on for America until President Harding signed a paper in a local living room after a golf game. Harding’s out-of-wedlock child was born in Asbury Park, and Atlantic City began the beauty contest that would become Miss America. Prohibition hit what was an unwilling state, and the governor tried to keep New Jersey liquor legally flowing, while bootleggers and rumrunners made illegal liquor generally available. Joseph Bilby and Harry Ziegler detail this frenetic era in the Garden State.

Joseph Bilby served as lieutenant in the First Infantry Division in Vietnam and is the author/editor of more than three hundred articles and fourteen books on New Jersey and military history. He is a trustee of the New Jersey Civil War Heritage Association, publications editor for its 150th Anniversary Committee and assistant curator of the National Guard Militia Museum of New Jersey. Harry Ziegler worked for many years at the Asbury Park Press, New Jersey’s second-largest newspaper, rising from reporter to bureau chief, editor and managing editor of the paper. He is currently associate principal of Bishop George Ahr High School in Edison, New Jersey, and has coauthored several books on New Jersey history.