Thomas J. Campanella is associate professor of urban studies and city planning at Cornell University and historian-in-residence of the New York City Parks Department. His books include Republic of Shade and The Concrete Dragon, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. He divides his time between Ithaca and the Marine Park neighborhood of Brooklyn where he grew up. Twitter @builtbrooklyn
A fascinating and well-written exploration. ---Norman Oder, Curbed A lively biography of New York's second borough. . . . Teeming with information, this is a must-read for fans of urban history. * Kirkus Reviews * Mr. Campanella . . . aims to give an account of `the Brooklyn unknown, overlooked and unheralded-the quotidian city taken for granted or long ago blotted out by time and tide.' He succeeds admirably . . . Brooklyn: The Once and Future City is a nuanced portrait of a diverse group of communities. Genteel farmland, then a byword for urban blight, and now the apotheosis of hipsterdom and gentrification-Brooklyn has seen it all. Mr. Campanella, a native Brooklynite himself, brings both love and scholarship to his writing, revealing the true spirt of this fractured land. * The Economist * Campanella . . . limns Brooklyn's multiple identities and the tensions over what the borough was, and to whom . . . a fascinating chronicle. ---Katrina Gulliver, New Criterion