Product Description

This generously illustrated book takes us on a tour of the ninety neighborhoods of Brooklyn, with their diverse ethnic makeups, abundance of architectural styles, and many churches and festivals.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #323258 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 312 pages

Review

From the Publisher
A joint publication of Citizens for NYC and Yale University Press; The Neighborhoods of New York Series

From the Back Cover
"Filled with maps, street-corner photographs, history, and local lore. As with the place itself, there are surprising rewards to getting lost here."--New Yorker; "Detail[s] in charming and highly accessible form the facts about a city that works."--William R. Everdell, New York Times Book Review; "Strikingly illustrated, well written and with clear maps, this is an excellent guide to the visual delights and the human landscape of our most complex borough."--Howard Kissel, Daily News; "A delightful tour."--Digby Diehl, Modern Maturity; "New York's most populous borough comes alive in The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn. . . . With photographs, maps, and fact-crammed descriptions of each neighborhood, this guide is a lively salute to Brooklyn. For the millions who have lived or now live in New York, and for the millions of others who long to, these books will be an essential and endlessly fascinating resource. . . . The most detailed and sparkling celebration of Brooklyn ever written."- Brooklyn Park Slope Courier

Customer Reviews

Want to know about Brooklyn? Read this!
We Brooklynites (yes, I STILL live here) do love to carp about our neighborhood boundaries and histories, don't we? I enjoy reading books about Brooklyn, and The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn is about the best I've come across in the last 30 years. The maps and the sidebar-style neighborhood profiles are great, and I like the eclectic mix of history, old and new photos, and contemporary comments. I don't usually keep books on my coffee table, but I find I've been leaving this one there because I come back to it again and again and look through it a little at a time. The Committee and editors did a beautiful job.

Disappointing
Perhaps my expectation were too high. I lived in Brooklyn (Williamsburg) during the 30's-60's I was hoping for more! The author seemed unable to make up his mind on what he wanted to write about several of the neighborhoods I am familar with. He does supply information, some excellent pictures and history, but the "whole" lacks a cohesiveness that makes the neighborhoods come alive. It seems to me he spans the 30's to the 80's with lightweight strokes when the actual history was so much richer.

Attractive and fun to read, but flawed
The first thing I did (natch') was to zero in on my home turf, Flatbush. I found enough doubtful information in a few pages to poison the entire book for me.

First, I lived for 15 years (1950-65) smack in the middle of a two block square area it styles "Caton Park." During that time I knew just about everyone in that area (at least everyone that had kids, which was a lot, there being PS249 in the middle of it), and I _never_ even heard the term "Caton Park." So the name is either an old real estate term that never caught on, or a recent affectation.

Second, they show the borders of Prospect Park South as way bigger than it is. PPS is a distinct turn-of-the-century development with beautiful mansions and a motto "Rur in Urb" (forgive if I misspelled the Latin): "Country in the City." Its residents included the Japanese Ambassador to the U.S. and the heir to the Ex-Lax fortune. Its borders are Church Ave on the north, the backyards of the houses on Buckingham Road, then the Brighton Line on the east, Beverley Road on the south, and a point between Stratford Road and Coney Island Avenue on the west.

They have PPS as going as far east as E.19 St. about three blocks too far) and all the way to Coney Island Ave. If you look at the housing stock in the "extended" areas you'll see why this is more than a harmless error.

Third, they identify "Albemarle Terrace" as a neighborhood area, then provide a picture of it which is actually of Prospect Park South, some blocks distant.

I haven't even started to review the book systematically, these are only my casual observations. It's possible I found the only three errors in the book in my first few minutes, but somehow I don't think so. Part of their research technique is to ask residents where they think they live, but this methodology is somewhat like the recently popular "oral history," which produces colorful reminisences, but very unreliable history.

I like the book even so, but read it as you would a horoscope, with a few grains of salt. Please don't use it to try to win arguments.