Growing Up Greenpoint (Large Print)


Book Description

In Growing up Greenpoint, Tommy Carbone captures what it was like to be a kid during the 1970s and 80s in Brooklyn. This funny, and sometimes emotional, memoir follows the years Tommy was educated not only in the classrooms of St. Stan's, but on the streets of Greenpoint. It was there, playing street games with friends, being cornered by muggers, playing kissing games with the girls, spending time with family, and constantly seeking out the best snack foods in the neighborhood, where Tommy learned a lot about life; although he may not have known it at the time. A simple conversation, years later, about the New York City Blackout of 1977 sparks Tommy to recall his youth in the city he loved. His stories will bring you into the action of what it was like to dodge cars during a ballgame, to take a hike to another borough in search of a particular burger, to the hours spent playing pinball in a corner candy store, and how special it was to build traditions with three generations of Polish and Italian relatives in Brooklyn's garden spot. The vivid descriptions of his antics of what it was like to grow up during those years will transport you to the sounds and smells of living in the city during those trying years. Reading this book, you'll be entertained, and at the same time, you may shake your head wondering how Tommy ever survived - Growing up in Greenpoint.




Growing Up Greenpoint - A Kid's Life in 1970s Brooklyn


Book Description

In Growing up Greenpoint, Tommy Carbone captures what it was like to be a kid during the 1970s and 80s in Brooklyn, New York. This funny, and sometimes emotional, memoir follows the years Tommy was educated not only in the classrooms of St. Stan's, but on the streets of Brooklyn, New York.




Forgotten Heroes of Ground Zero


Book Description

“The Bravest” is a label of enormous respect. No higher level of respect can one identify with that of the Fire Department of New York City (FDNY). No greater leadership and traditional institution have I ever been a part of. I never envisioned how my life would virtually spin in so many directions in one year. The dramatic challenge that the FDNY has ahead leaves one breathless.




The Brooklynites


Book Description

"Brooklyn is the conscience of New York. While Manhattan tears everything down and changes everything, Brooklyn does a similar thing, but fails miserably at it. It is a crazy quilt of a place. A mongrel place of sorts. It mixes old and modern in a haphazard way. It represents a tiny microcosm of the world-functional utopia." -Jonathan Lethem A complex and quixotic urban animal found ranging across southeast New York City, the Brooklynite has obtained a sort of mythological status, representing the "you tawkin' to me?" attitude for which the city is world-renowned. For over three years, writer Anthony LaSala and photographer Seth Kushner trekked tirelessly across the borough, documenting these charismatic characters in The Brooklynites, a collection of images, interviews, and essays. Kushner and LaSala, native Brooklynites themselves, sought out the famous and the nameless, current residents and former inhabitants, providing a profoundly comprehensive portrait of both the metropolis and its denizens. Featuring the likes of Paul Auster, Spike Lee, Steve Buscemi, Rosie Perez, Sufjan Stevens, John Turturro, Casey Spooner, Steve Schirripa, Matisyahu, and Jonathan Lethem-as well as local heroes-The Brooklynites features figures from the widely diverse neighborhoods of the city's most populous borough: Brooklyn Heights, Bay Ridge, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bensonhurst, Boerum Hill, Brighton Beach, Brownsville, Bushwick, Canarsie, Carroll Gardens, Clinton Hill, Coney Island, DUMBO, Dyker Heights, East New York, Flatbush, Flatlands, Fort Greene, Gowanus, Gravesend, Greenpoint, Manhattan Beach, Marine Park, Midwood, Mill Basin, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Red Hook, Sheepshead Bay, Sunset Park, and Williamsburg. With a population of 2.5 million people, Brooklyn is one of the most celebrated locales in all the world. Its landmarks (The Brooklyn Bridge, Greenwood Cemetery), renowned neighborhoods (Coney Island, Park Slope), history (The Brooklyn Dodgers) and institutions (Brooklyn Academy of Music, Prospect Park) are recognized in every corner of the globe while its stories and legends have been recounted in hundreds of famous novels (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Motherless Brooklyn, Last Exit to Brooklyn), television shows (The Cosby Show), theater productions (BKLYN the musical) and films (Saturday Night Fever, Crooklyn). The Brooklynites gives readers an all-inclusive tour of the "home to everyone from everywhere": Brooklyn, New York.




Brooklyn Before


Book Description

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 Gentrification and Inequality in Brooklyn


Book Description

While most studies on gentrification focus almost exclusively on its causes and consequences through an examination of housing, class conflict, and the displacement of residents, this book analyzes the process of gentrification. Gentrification and Inequality in Brooklyn examines the ways in which the established working-class and lower-income residents of Greenpoint, Brooklyn remain socially segregated from the incoming gentrifiers, with both groups forming parallel cultures within the shared physical spaces of the community. Desena broadens the typical analyses of gentrification to include the grass roots dynamics which create social class relations that lead to residential segregation created by social class relations. Drawing upon areas traditionally under represented in urban sociology, including families, women, children, and local institutions other than housing, this study explores the ways in which working-class residents, in the course of their everyday lives, negotiate change in their neighborhood and dissimilarity with their new (gentry) neighbors. Gentrification and Inequality in Brooklyn touches on issues familiar to anyone who has lived in a multi-class or multi-ethnic community, while offering new perspectives on the ways that such communities develop and maintain the boundaries of social segregation.




It's Kind of a Funny Story


Book Description

Like many ambitious New York City teenagers, Craig Gilner sees entry into Manhattan's Executive Pre-Professional High School as the ticket to his future. Determined to succeed at life—which means getting into the right high school to get into the right college to get the right job—Craig studies night and day to ace the entrance exam, and does. That's when things start to get crazy. At his new school, Craig realizes that he isn't brilliant compared to the other kids; he's just average, and maybe not even that. He soon sees his once-perfect future crumbling away.




Dust & Grooves


Book Description

A photographic look into the world of vinyl record collectors—including Questlove—in the most intimate of environments—their record rooms. Compelling photographic essays from photographer Eilon Paz are paired with in-depth and insightful interviews to illustrate what motivates these collectors to keep digging for more records. The reader gets an up close and personal look at a variety of well-known vinyl champions, including Gilles Peterson and King Britt, as well as a glimpse into the collections of known and unknown DJs, producers, record dealers, and everyday enthusiasts. Driven by his love for vinyl records, Paz takes us on a five-year journey unearthing the very soul of the vinyl community.




Another Brooklyn


Book Description

A Finalist for the 2016 National Book Award New York Times Bestseller A SeattleTimes pick for Summer Reading Roundup 2017 The acclaimed New York Times bestselling and National Book Award–winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming delivers her first adult novel in twenty years. Running into a long-ago friend sets memory from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything—until it wasn’t. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant—a part of a future that belonged to them. But beneath the hopeful veneer, there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. A world where madness was just a sunset away and fathers found hope in religion. Like Louise Meriwether’s Daddy Was a Number Runner and Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn heartbreakingly illuminates the formative time when childhood gives way to adulthood—the promise and peril of growing up—and exquisitely renders a powerful, indelible, and fleeting friendship that united four young lives.




The Planet of Junior Brown


Book Description

Already a leader in New York's underground world of homeless children, Buddy Clark takes on the responsibility of protecting the overweight, emotionally disturbed friend with whom he has been playing hooky from eighth grade all semester.