Thomas J. Campanella

Although this history sprawls all over the place, the author has certain trends he wants to pursue; Brooklyn as Manhattan's alter ego, Brooklyn as a complex of neighborhoods, Brooklyn's search for its own monumental identity, Brooklyn's fall as a bastion of the working man, and subsequent reinvention as the hipster's promised land. You can learn something useful upon opening to a given random page, which is another way of saying that I think Campanella could have produced a more tightly-written book.

If I have a particular gripe, it's that I would have liked to have learned more about what the impact of Hurricane Sandy (and flooding in general) meant to Brooklyn, maybe as part of a consideration about rising seas might mean to the locality. This would have been better than the rather cutesy endpoint we get on the ups and downs of gentrification. Still worth your time if you're interested in Brooklyn in particular, or U.S. urban history in general.… (altro)