Let me just say that if you took two people who grew up in different neighborhoods in Brooklyn and sat them down in a room together they could talk for hours on end and basically share the same stories as if they grew up right next door to each other You see that is why I am writing this book. The stories that I will share with you as you turn each page do not belong to me exclusively. They are YOUR stories just as much as they are mine. All you really have to do is change the names and faces and use your own neighborhood as their back drop and believe me they are yours. I have included after each story an empty page for you to put your story on it so it will become “Your Brooklyn “ and a journal to pass on to those who you wish to remember your story

There must be something in our souls that cries out to explain to the world not only who we are but also how it was we got to be the person our friends and family know and love. For Martin Blumberg, the path of explaining himself to the world begins by understanding the way the world around him influenced his experiences and choices and how he interacted with family, friends, teachers, and neighborhood businesses as he grew up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. What puzzles us all is the mystery of how the kids we grew up with in those same surroundings went on to become either well-educated and respected professionals and businessmen, or gangsters and incarcerated criminals. Ultimately, growing up is a never-ending series of choices and interactions, some good, some not so, but ultimately, in balance, the better choices lead us to the happiness and self-satisfaction we enjoy, along with our many accomplishments. My dear friend Marty Blumberg has traveled a fascinating and unique path as he grew up in Brownsville and then to Canarsie neighborhoods, which colored and influenced his early life and molded him to become the great guy we all know and love. This is Martin's story, and it beautifully explains him to all of us, and, no doubt, through his introspections and insights, most importantly, explains him to himself. -Roger Elowitz

For the first time, here is Brooklyn's story through the eyes of its greatest storytellers. Like Paris in the twenties or postwar Greenwich Village, Brooklyn today is experiencing an extraordinary cultural boom. In recent years, writers of all stripes—from Jhumpa Lahiri, Jennifer Egan, and Colson Whitehead to Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer—have flocked to its patchwork of distinctive neighborhoods. But as literary critic and journalist Evan Hughes reveals, the rich literary life now flourishing in Brooklyn is part of a larger, fascinating history. With a dynamic mix of literary biography and urban history, Hughes takes us on a tour of Brooklyn past and present and reveals that hiding in Walt Whitman's Fort Greene Park, Hart Crane's Brooklyn Bridge, the raw Williamsburg of Henry Miller's youth, Truman Capote's famed house on Willow Street, and the contested streets of Jonathan Lethem's Boerum Hill is the story of more than a century of life in America's cities. Literary Brooklyn is a prismatic investigation into a rich literary inheritance, but most of all it's a deep look into the beloved borough, a place as diverse and captivating as the people who walk its streets and write its stories.

A tribute to New York City's most literary borough-featuring original nonfiction pieces by today's most celebrated writers. Of all the urban landscapes in America, perhaps none has so thoroughly infused and nurtured modern literature as Brooklyn. Though its literary history runs deep-Walt Whitman, Truman Capote, and Norman Mailer are just a few of its storied inhabitants-in recent years the borough has seen a growing concentration of bestselling novelists, memoirists, poets, and journalists. It has become what Greenwich Village once was for an earlier generation: a wellspring of inspiration and artistic expression. Brooklyn Was Mine gives some of today's best writers an opportunity to pay tribute to the borough they love in 20 original essays that draw on past and present to create a mosaic that brilliantly captures the quality and diversity of a unique, literary landscape. Contributors include: Emily Barton, Susan Choi, Rachel Cline, Philip Dray, Jennifer Egan, Colin Harrison, Joanna Hershon, Jonathan Lethem, Dinaw Mengestu, Elizabeth Gaffney, Lara Vapnyar, Lawrence Osborne, Katie Roiphe, John Burnham Schwartz, Vijay Seshadri, Darcey Steinke, Darin Strauss, Alexandra Styron, Robert Sullivan With an introduction by Phillip Lopate.

A celebration of Brooklyn features more than one hundred original articles that tap into the life of "America's Hometown."

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.