Competing Voices : Outskirts Press : 9781977236746 : 197723674X : 28 Jan 2021 : In the first edition of this book, I began by saying that my purpose was not to write a typical municipal history. That still stands. Too often such studies are little more than exercises in boosterism. Instead, I wanted this account to be critical. Most people think the word means something negative or censorious, but it doesn't have to. In my estimation, the preferred synonymous for being critical are evaluating, explaining, interpreting, and expounding. This necessarily entails revealing both the light and the darkness in researching the history of Stockton or any other subject for that matter. In her new history of the United States, We Hold These Truths (2018), Harvard historian Jill Lepore insists that history is "not merely a form of memory but also a form of investigation, to be disputed, like philosophy, its premises questioned, its evidence examined, its arguments countered." She goes on to s