America's third largest city until 1890, Brooklyn, New York, had a striking theatrical culture before it became a borough of Greater New York in 1898. As the city gained size and influence, more and more theatres arose, with at least 15 venues ultimately vying for favor. Too many theatregoers, however, preferred the discomforts of a ferry and horsecar trip to New York's playhouses instead of supporting the local product. Nor did the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 do Brooklyn's theatres any favors. Manhattan's Goliath slayed Brooklyn's David. This first comprehensive study of Brooklyn's old-time theatre describes the city's early history, each of its many playhouses, its plays and actors (including nearly every foreign and domestic star), and its scandals and catastrophes, including the theatre fire that killed nearly 300. Brooklyn's ongoing struggle to establish theatres in a society dominated by anti-theatrical preachers, including Henry Ward Beecher, is detailed, as are all the ways that Brooklyn typified 19th century American theatre, from stock companies to combinations. Replete with fascinating anecdotes, this is the story of a major city from which theatre all but vanished before being reborn as a present-day artistic mecca.

Winner of the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Colm Tóibín's internationally bestselling novel is a story of devastating emotional power. At the centre of Colm Tóibín's internationally celebrated novel is Eilis Lacey, one among many of her generation who has come of age in 1950s Ireland but cannot find work at home. When she receives a job offer in America, it is clear to everyone that she must go. Leaving her family and country behind, Eilis heads for unfamiliar Brooklyn, and to a crowded boarding house where the landlady's intense scrutiny and the small jealousies of her fellow residents only deepen her isolation. Slowly, however, the pain of parting and a longing for home are buried beneath the rhythms of her new life—until she begins to realize that she has found a sort of happiness. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love, tragic news summons her back to Ireland, where she unexpectedly finds herself facing an impossible decision.

White Shoes' is a collection of self-portraits taken in locations around New York that were central to the city's once pivotal - and now largely obscured and unacknowledged - involvement in the slave trade. Nona Faustine depicts herself at the sites of slave auctions, burial grounds, slave-owning farms, and the coastal locations where slave ships docked, posing nude apart from a pair of white high-heeled shoes. Documenting herself in places where history becomes tangible, Faustine acts as a conduit or receptor, in solidarity with people whose names and memories have been lost but are embedded in the land. Through quiet but defiant self-representation, Faustine responds to a history of depiction of Black people that is shaped by subjugation, phrenology, and pseudo-science. Her complex large-format images refer and respond to a range of sources including daguerrotypes of slaves and photographs commissioned by naturalists, while her nudity - expressive of fearless self-possession as well as vulnerability - subverts the legacy of Black and female nudes in Western art. Running throughout the images, the talismanic white shoes that give the series its name suggest the many adaptations to dominant White culture that were and are still demanded of people of colour. At once historical and speculative, White Shoes confronts the relationship between the visible and invisible, between what is displayed and what is kept from view. Includes newly commissioned texts by Pamela Sneed, Jessica Lanay, Jonathan Michael Square and Seph Rodney, together with an interview of the artist by Jessica Lanay

From 19th Century playhouses to the opulence of the 1920s movie palace and the multiplexes of today, The Brooklyn Theatre Index acts as a resource guide to the borough's performance spaces. The Index has its origins in two earlier surveys of Brooklyn theatres conducted independently by Dario Marotta and Michael Miller, each compiling an extensive listing of Brooklyn venues. For the purpose of the Index, the two lists were combined and extensive research was carried out on each auditorium with new information uncovered and a number of new venues added. Volume I begins with Gothic Hall on Adams Street and ends with a "moving picture show" at Lorimer and Meserole Streets..

A major new history of Brooklyn, told through its landscapes, buildings, and the people who made them, from the early 17th century to today.

Scenes from the plays and portraits of leading actors accompany a statistical record of the current season