What do Prospect Park, Coney Island, and Atlantic Avenue have in common? They are all located in Brooklyn, New York, a magical place where you can listen to jazz music, eat bagels and lox, and sit on the stoop of a brownstone and daydream. Children will recognize aspects of their own neighborhoods in this celebration of urban culture and community.

From America's first suburb to its favorite borough, Brooklyn is by all accounts matchless. Taking readers away from the film sets and off the tour buses, borough historian John Manbeck reveals the communities that have defined its diverse neighborhoods, from the early Dutch settlers to today's colonizing hipsters. Through urbanism and war, depression and gentrification, Manbeck's columns, first printed in the Brooklyn Eagle and now collected here, show Brooklyn for what it isa cultural and social nonpareil that just happens to sit across the East River from Manhattan.

Mill Basin -- Sunset Park -- Borough Park -- Bay Ridge -- Dyker Heights -- Bensonhurst -- Bath Beach -- Gravesend -- Sheepshead Bay -- Gerritsen Beach -- Manhattan Beach -- Brighton Beach -- Coney Island -- Acknowledgments -- Appendix -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Includes periodicals, American and English; essays, book-chapters, etc.; bibliographies, necrology, index to dates of principal events.