Brooklyn Modern is the first book to explore the connection between Brooklyn’s astounding rebirth and its emerging architecture. As the new cultural heart of New York, Brooklyn has recently attracted many young people interested in creating their own sense of space, as well as in renovating brownstones and townhouses. The results are homes that express the optimism, resourcefulness, and experimentation of many of Brooklyn’s bohemian residents. Cutting-edge new public buildings have also enhanced the area’s cachet.Working with spatial and financial restraints, architects in Brooklyn have demonstrated deft solutions to urban living everywhere. Likewise, the architects working in Brooklyn are no longer just local firms, but "star-chitects" such as Frank Gehry, Richard Meier, and David Adjaye, among others. Essays by two very popular bloggers, Grace Bonney of Design*Sponge and Jonathan Butler of Brownstoner, give perspective on new ways of living as aesthetics and landscape change.

In particular, they question whether sprawl was a necessary condition of American industrialization; could the agricultural base that preceded and surrounded the city have survived the onrush of residential real estate speculation with a bit of foresight and public policies that the politically outnumbered farmers could not have secured on their own?

Add a dash of cool to your cocktail with The Brooklyn Bartender, an entertaining and informative illustrated guide for anyone who wants to mix delicious, unique and hip variations on classic drinks and spirits. From "one of the best cocktail writers around" (Library Journal) Carey Jones, comes a unique and practical guide to the most inventive drinks being served by real mixologists in Brooklyn clubs and bars today. Featuring full color images, recipes, tips, and handily organized by spirit, The Brooklyn Bartender also profiles the bars, pubs, and gastropubs and the resident bartender's recommendations for events and more. You'll enjoy: Chapters on gin, vodka, whiskey, rum and cachaca, tequila, mezcal, brandy, amaro and more Details on wine, beer, and bubbly treats Techniques, or when to shake and when to stir Recipes for syrups and infusions Tips on stocking your home bar for any event A primer on standard equipment for upping your mixing talent Whether you want to sit at one of these cool bars and sip the house creation or begin your own mixing at home inspired by the experts from New York City's coolest borough, The Brooklyn Bartender is a great addition to your home library and the perfect gift. Cheers!

Featured in The New York Times Book Review Only a few decades ago, the Brooklyn stereotype well known to Americans was typified by television programs such as “The Honeymooners” and “Welcome Back, Kotter”—comedies about working-class sensibilities, deprivation, and struggles. Today, the borough across the East River from Manhattan is home to trendsetters, celebrities, and enough “1 percenters” to draw the Occupy Wall Street protests across the Brooklyn Bridge. “Tres Brooklyn,” has become a compliment among gourmands in Parisian restaurants. In The New Brooklyn, Kay Hymowitz chronicles the dramatic transformation of the once crumbling borough. Devoting separate chapters to Park Slope, Williamsburg, Bed Stuy and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Hymowitz identifies the government policies and young, educated white and black middle class enclaves responsible for creating thousands of new businesses, safe and lively streets, and one of the most desirable urban environments in the world. Exploring Brownsville, the growing Chinatown of Sunset Park, and Caribbean Canarsie, Hymowitz also wrestles with the question of whether the borough’s new wealth can lift up long disadvantaged minorities, and the current generation of immigrants, many of whom will need more skills than their predecessors to thrive in a postindustrial economy. The New Brooklyn’s portraits of dramatic urban transformation, and its sometimes controversial effects, offers prescriptions relevant to “phoenix” cities coming back to life across the United States and beyond its borders.

“It’s ‘Friends’ meets ‘Almost Famous’ meets the beach read you’ll be recommending all summer.” –TheSkimm From the author of the New York Times bestsellers All Adults Here and This Time Tomorrow, a smart, highly entertaining novel about a tight-knit group of friends from college— and what it means to finally grow up, well after adulthood has set in. Friends and former college bandmates Elizabeth and Andrew and Zoe have watched one another marry, buy real estate, and start businesses and families, all while trying to hold on to the identities of their youth. But nothing ages them like having to suddenly pass the torch (of sexuality, independence, and the ineffable alchemy of cool) to their own offspring. Back in the band's heyday, Elizabeth put on a snarl over her Midwestern smile, Andrew let his unwashed hair grow past his chin, and Zoe was the lesbian all the straight women wanted to sleep with. Now nearing fifty, they all live within shouting distance in the same neighborhood deep in gentrified Brooklyn, and the trappings of the adult world seem to have arrived with ease. But the summer that their children reach maturity (and start sleeping together), the fabric of the adult lives suddenly begins to unravel, and the secrets and revelations that are finally let loose—about themselves, and about the famous fourth band member who soared and fell without them—can never be reclaimed. Straub packs wisdom and insight and humor together in a satisfying book about neighbors and nosiness, ambition and pleasure, the excitement of youth, the shock of middle age, and the fact that our passions—be they food, or friendship, or music—never go away, they just evolve and grow along with us.

Considered one of the city's most notorious industrial slums in the 1940s and 1950s, Brownstone Brooklyn by the 1980s had become a post-industrial landscape of hip bars, yoga studios, and beautifully renovated, wildly expensive townhouses. In The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn, Suleiman Osman offers a groundbreaking history of this unexpected transformation. Challenging the conventional wisdom that New York City's renaissance started in the 1990s, Osman locates the origins of gentrification in Brooklyn in the cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. Gentrification began as a grassroots movement led by young and idealistic white college graduates searching for "authenticity" and life outside the burgeoning suburbs. Where postwar city leaders championed slum clearance and modern architecture, "brownstoners" (as they called themselves) fought for a new romantic urban ideal that celebrated historic buildings, industrial lofts and traditional ethnic neighborhoods as a refuge from an increasingly technocratic society. Osman examines the emergence of a "slow-growth" progressive coalition as brownstoners joined with poorer residents to battle city planners and local machine politicians. But as brownstoners migrated into poorer areas, race and class tensions emerged, and by the 1980s, as newspapers parodied yuppies and anti-gentrification activists marched through increasingly expensive neighborhoods, brownstoners debated whether their search for authenticity had been a success or failure.

From Bedford-Stuyvesant to Williamsburg, Brooklyn's historic names are emblems of American culture and history. These pages take readers on a stroll through the streets and places of this thriving metropolis to reveal the borough's textured past. Over 500 of Brooklyn's most prominent place names are organized alphabetically by region. Photos & maps.