Before Brooklyn rose to international fame there existed a vibrant borough of neighborhoods rich with connections and traditions. During the 1970s and 1980s, photographer Larry Racioppo, a South Brooklynite with roots three generations deep, recorded Brooklyn on the cusp of being the trendy borough we know today. In Brooklyn Before, Racioppo lets us see the vitality of his native Brooklyn, stretching from historic Park Slope to the beginnings of Windsor Terrace and Sunset Park. His black and white photographs pull us deep into the community, stretching our memories back more than forty years and teasing out the long-lost recollections of life on the streets and in apartment homes. Racioppo has the fascinating ability to tell a story in one photograph and, because of his native bona fides, he depicts an intriguing set of true Brooklyn stories from the inside, in ways that an outsider simply cannot. On the pages of, Brooklyn Before the intimacy and roughness of life in a working-class community of Irish American, Italian American, and Puerto Rican families is shown with honesty and insight. Racioppo's 128 photographs are paired with essays from journalist Tom Robbins and art critic and curator Julia Van Haaften. Taken together, the images and words of Brooklyn Before return us to pre-gentrification Brooklyn and immerse us in a community defined by work, family, and ethnic ties.

In the April of 1945, exactly two years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball, liberal Boston City Councilman Izzy Muchnick persuaded the Red Sox to try out three black players in return for a favorable vote to allow the team to play on Sundays. The Red Sox got the councilman’s much-needed vote, but the tryout was a sham; the three players would get no closer to the major leagues. It was a lost battle in a war that was ultimately won by Robinson in 1947. This book tells the story of the little-known heroes who fought segregation in baseball, from communist newspaper reporters to the Pullman car porters who saw to it that black newspapers espousing integration in professional sports reached the homes of blacks throughout the country. It also reminds us that the first black player in professional baseball was not Jackie Robinson but Moses Fleetwood Walker in 1884, and that for a time integrated teams were not that unusual. And then, as segregation throughout the country hardened, the exclusion of blacks in baseball quietly became the norm, and the battle for integration began anew.

Before Brooklyn rose to international fame there existed a vibrant borough of neighborhoods rich with connections and traditions. During the 1970s and 1980s, photographer Larry Racioppo, a South Brooklynite with roots three generations deep, recorded Brooklyn on the cusp of being the trendy borough we know today. In Brooklyn Before, Racioppo lets us see the vitality of his native Brooklyn, stretching from historic Park Slope to the beginnings of Windsor Terrace and Sunset Park. His black and white photographs pull us deep into the community, stretching our memories back more than forty years and teasing out the long-lost recollections of life on the streets and in apartment homes. Racioppo has the fascinating ability to tell a story in one photograph and, because of his native bona fides, he depicts an intriguing set of true Brooklyn stories from the inside, in ways that an outsider simply cannot. On the pages of, Brooklyn Before the intimacy and roughness of life in a working-class community of Irish American, Italian American, and Puerto Rican families is shown with honesty and insight. Racioppo's 128 photographs are paired with essays from journalist Tom Robbins and art critic and curator Julia Van Haaften. Taken together, the images and words of Brooklyn Before return us to pre-gentrification Brooklyn and immerse us in a community defined by work, family, and ethnic ties.

The never-before-told story of Brooklyn’s vibrant and forgotten queer history, from the mid-1850s up to the present day. ***An ALA GLBT Round Table Over the Rainbow 2019 Top Ten Selection*** ***NAMED ONE OF THE BEST LGBTQ BOOKS OF 2019 by Harper's Bazaar*** "A romantic, exquisite history of gay culture." —Kirkus Reviews, starred “[A] boisterous, motley new history...entertaining and insightful.” —The New York Times Book Review Hugh Ryan’s When Brooklyn Was Queer is a groundbreaking exploration of the LGBT history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s up through the queer women who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II, and beyond. No other book, movie, or exhibition has ever told this sweeping story. Not only has Brooklyn always lived in the shadow of queer Manhattan neighborhoods like Greenwich Village and Harlem, but there has also been a systematic erasure of its queer history—a great forgetting. Ryan is here to unearth that history for the first time. In intimate, evocative, moving prose he discusses in new light the fundamental questions of what history is, who tells it, and how we can only make sense of ourselves through its retelling; and shows how the formation of the Brooklyn we know today is inextricably linked to the stories of the incredible people who created its diverse neighborhoods and cultures. Through them, When Brooklyn Was Queer brings Brooklyn’s queer past to life, and claims its place as a modern classic.

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

Lavishly illustrated with prints, paintings, memorabilia, and objects from The Brooklyn Historical Society's unparalleled collection, Brooklyn! will bring every reader closer to the Brooklyn of legend and fact.

Around the corner. The next block. Across the At the end of the line. Borough Park. Gowanus. Flatbush. Canarsie. Ridgewood. Greenpoint. Brownsville. Bay Ridge. Bensonhurst. City Line. What was the place called Brooklyn really like back then... when Brooklyn was the world? Elliot Willensky, born in Brooklyn and now official Borough Historian, takes us back to a sweeter time when a trip on the new BMT subway was a delightful adventure, when summer days were a picnic on the sand and evenings were Nathan's hotdogs at Coney Island and a whirl of lights, spills, and chills at dazzling Luna Park. Remembering Brooklyn, it's the neighborhoods you think of first -- or maybe it's your own block, the one you were raised on. In those days, the street was a more animated, more colorful place. Jacks and jump rope, hit-the-stick, double-dutch and skelly or potsy (hopscotch to you) were played everywhere. The street was a natural amphitheater, and the stoop was the perfect place for grown-ups to sit and watch and visit with neighbors. Stores-on-wheels selling fruit, baked goods, and the old standby, seltzer, rolled right down the block, and the Fuller Brush man and Electrolux vacuum-cleaner salesmen worked door to door, saving housewives countless shopping trips. For many, a big night out was dinner at a Chinese restaurant, where 99 percent of the patrons were non-Chinese, and you could get mysterious-sounding dishes like moo goo gai pan and subgum chow mein -- "One from column A, two from column B." If you could afford to go somewhere really classy, the Marine Roof of the Bossert Hotel was one of the hottest nightspots. A hot date on Saturday night featured big bands at the clubs on TheStrip (Flatbush Avenue below Prospect Park) -- the Patio, the Parakeet Club, the Circus Lounge -- or gala stage shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music or the enormous Paramount Theatre. Still, for family entertainment you couldn't beat a day at the beach and a night on Surf Avenue, taking in the sideshows and the penny arcades. For Brooklyn, the years between 1920 and 1957 were a special time. It was in 1920 that the subway system reached to Brooklyn's outer edge -- linking the entire borough with Manhattan and making it an ideal spot for millions of new families to build their homes. The end of the era came in 1957 -- the last year that Brooklyn's beloved Dodgers played at Ebbets Field before moving to sunny California. For many loyal fans the fate of "Dem Bums" represents the fate of Brooklyn. With a brilliant, entertaining text and hundreds of exciting, nostalgic photographs (many never before published), When Brooklyn Was the World recovers the history of this lively city, as remembered by the millions of people who knew Brooklyn in its golden era.