Download or read book Brooklyn A Personal Memoir written by Truman Capote and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2001, Truman Capote’s stylish homage to Brooklyn was brought back into print, but not until 2014— more than fifty years after they were taken—were the original photographs commissioned to illustrate the essay discovered by the late photographer’s son. Also found among the negatives were previously unknown portraits of Capote; none of the photos had ever been published. Now, with the publication of Brooklyn: A Personal Memoir, with the lost photographs of David Attie, the words and images are united for the first time. With an introduction by George Plimpton and afterword by Eli Attie.

Download or read book A House on the Heights written by Truman Capote and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tranquil life he led in the quiet enclave of Brooklyn Heights stood in sharp contrast to the glittering scene he adored on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge, but for a few years in the 1950's and '60's, Truman Capote happily made his home in a yellow brick house on Willow Street. By turns wistful and farcical, A House on the Heights vividly evokes a neighborhood Capote described as among Brooklyn's "splendid contradictions," a world of grand homes and dimly recalled gentility, of mysterious warehouses and cartoonish street thugs, of antiques and dowagers, a broad yard overhung with wisteria, and the famous Esplanade with its incomparable view—all rendered in Capote's deft and stylish prose.

Download or read book Love Hope and Tragedy written by Joan Calciano and published by . This book was released on 1998-05 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book BAM and Then It Hit Me written by Karen Brooks Hopkins and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: President Emerita of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Karen Brooks Hopkins pens BAM…and Then It Hit Me, an inspiring memoir of her 36 years at the iconic cultural institution, America's oldest performing arts center. The book has a sharp focus on concepts such as leadership, innovation, urban revitalization (including the transformation of Brooklyn from Manhattan Outpost to the coolest neighborhood on the planet), as highly successful cultural fundraising played critical roles in the colorful evolution of this world-class cultural juggernaut in the performing arts.

Download or read book Literary Brooklyn written by Evan Hughes and published by Holt Paperbacks. This book was released on 2011-08-16 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Brooklyn Heights written by Miral al-Tahawy and published by . This book was released on 2014-02-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hind, newly arrived in New York with her eight-year-old son, several suitcases of unfinished manuscripts, and hardly any English, finds a room in a Brooklyn teeming with people like her who dream of becoming writers. As she discovers the various corners of her new home, they conjure up parallel memories from her childhood and her small Bedouin village in the Nile Delta: Emilia who sells used shoes at the flea market smells like Zeinab, the old woman who worked for Hind's grandfather; the reflection of her own body as she dances tango awakens the awkwardness of her relationship to that body across the years; the story of Lilette, the Egyptian bourgeoise who has lost her memory, prompts Hind to safeguard her own. Through this kaleidoscopic spectrum of disadvantaged characters we encounter unique but familiar life histories in this award-winning and intensely moving novel of displacement and exile. It was the winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, and was shortlisted for the 2011 Arabic Booker prize.

Download or read book The Body of Brooklyn written by David Lazar and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2005-04 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even before the controversy that surrounded the publication of A Million Little Pieces, the question of truth has been at the heart of memoir. From Elie Wiesel to Benjamin Wilkomirski to David Sedaris, the veracity of writers' claims has been suspect. In this fascinating and timely collection of essays, leading writers meditate on the subject of truth in literary nonfiction. As David Lazar writes in his introduction, "How do we verify? Do we care to? (Do we dare to eat the apple of knowledge and say it's true? Or is it a peach?) Do we choose to? Is it a subcategory of faith? How do you respond when someone says, 'This is really true'? Why do they choose to say it then?" The past and the truth are slippery things, and the art of non-fiction writing requires the writer to shape as well as explore. In personal essays, meditations on the nature of memory, considerations of the genres of memoir, prose poetry, essay, fiction, and film, the contributors to this provocative collection attempt to find answers to the question of what truth in nonfiction means. Contributors: John D'Agata, Mark Doty, Su Friedrich, Joanna Frueh, Ray González, Vivian Gornick, Barbara Hammer, Kathryn Harrison, Marianne Hirsch, Wayne Koestenbaum, Leonard Kriegel, David Lazar, Alphonso Lingis, Paul Lisicky, Nancy Mairs, Nancy K. Miller, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Phyllis Rose, Oliver Sacks, David Shields, and Leo Spitzer.

Download or read book Duck and Cover written by Rosemary Neri Villanella and published by Xulon Press. This book was released on 2017-04-12 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Duck and Cover is a memoir born of Rosemary's desire to transport readers back to the beloved 1960's Brooklyn of her youth, with its familiar streets and stoops, during a more innocent time in this fabled borough. Yet Duck and Cover is also a coming-of-age tale, spotlighting the universal struggle of a young girl forging an individual identity- and trying not to attract too much attention-while carefully navigating her way across that crucial border between childhood and adolescence.

Download or read book Brooklyn written by Colm Toibin and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2010-04-06 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Cobble Hill written by Cecily von Ziegesar and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Gossip Girl series brings her sharp-eyed and irresistible wit to this “quirky novel of lovable misfits” (Publishers Weekly) chronicling a year in the lives of four families in an upscale Brooklyn neighborhood as they seek purpose and community—until one unforgettable night at a raucous neighborhood party knocks them to their senses. Welcome to Cobble Hill. In this eclectic Brooklyn neighborhood, private storms brew amongst four married couples and their children. There’s ex-groupie Mandy, so underwhelmed by motherhood and her current physical state that she fakes a debilitating disease to get the attention of her skateboarding, ex-boyband member husband Stuart. There’s the unconventional new school nurse, Peaches, on whom Stuart has an unrequited crush, and her disappointing husband Greg, who wears noise-cancelling headphones—everywhere. A few blocks away, Roy, a well-known, newly transplanted British novelist, has lost the thread of his next novel and his marriage to indefatigable Wendy. Around the corner, Tupper, the nervous, introverted industrial designer with a warehouse full of prosthetic limbs struggles to pin down his elusive artist wife Elizabeth. Throw in two hormonal teenagers, a ten-year-old pyromaniac, a drug dealer pretending to be a doctor, and a lot of hidden cameras, and you’ve got a combustible mix of egos, desires, and secrets bubbling in brownstone Brooklyn. “Breezy, witty, and compulsively fun to read” (Kirkus Reviews), Cobble Hill is highly entertaining portrait of contemporary family life and the colorful characters who call Brooklyn home.

Download or read book Brooklyn Story written by Suzanne Corso and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-12-28 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perfectly evoking the sights and sounds of the summer of 1978 in Brooklyn, Suzanne Corso makes an acclaimed fiction debut with this powerful coming-of-age tale, told from an adult perspective, of family, best friends, first loves, and big dreams waiting to come true. Samantha Bonti is fifteen years old, half Jewish and half Italian, and hesitantly edging toward pure Brooklyn. She lives in Bensonhurst with her mother, Joan, a woman poisoned with cynicism and shackled by addictions; and with her Grandma Ruth, Samantha’s loudest and most opinionated source of encouragement. As flawed as they are, they are family. And this is home—a tight-knit community of ancestors and traditions, of controlling mobsters, compliant wives, and charismatic young guys willing to engage in anything illegal to get a shot at playing with the big boys. Yet Samantha has something that even her most simpatico girlfriend, Janice Caputo, doesn’t share—a desire to become a writer and to escape their insular, overcrowded little world and the destiny that is assumed for all of them. Then comes Tony Kroon. He’s a gorgeous mobster wannabe, a Bensonhurst Adonis whose seductive charms Samantha finds irresistible—even when she knows she’s too smart to fall this deep . . . but Samantha soon finds herself swallowed up by dangerous circumstances that threaten to jeopardize more than her dreams. Grandma Ruth’s advice: Samantha had better write herself out of this story and into a new one, fast.

Download or read book The Best We Could Do written by Thi Bui and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National bestseller 2017 National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Finalist ABA Indies Introduce Winter / Spring 2017 Selection Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Spring 2017 Selection ALA 2018 Notable Books Selection An intimate and poignant graphic novel portraying one family’s journey from war-torn Vietnam, from debut author Thi Bui. This beautifully illustrated and emotional story is an evocative memoir about the search for a better future and a longing for the past. Exploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family, Bui documents the story of her family’s daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s, and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves. At the heart of Bui’s story is a universal struggle: While adjusting to life as a first-time mother, she ultimately discovers what it means to be a parent—the endless sacrifices, the unnoticed gestures, and the depths of unspoken love. Despite how impossible it seems to take on the simultaneous roles of both parent and child, Bui pushes through. With haunting, poetic writing and breathtaking art, she examines the strength of family, the importance of identity, and the meaning of home. In what Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen calls “a book to break your heart and heal it,” The Best We Could Do brings to life Thi Bui’s journey of understanding, and provides inspiration to all of those who search for a better future while longing for a simpler past.

Download or read book Making Rent in Bed Stuy written by Brandon Harris and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young African American millennial filmmaker’s funny, sometimes painful, true-life coming-of-age story of trying to make it in New York City—a chronicle of poverty and wealth, creativity and commerce, struggle and insecurity, and the economic and cultural forces intertwined with "the serious, life-threatening process" of gentrification. Making Rent in Bed-Stuy explores the history and sociocultural importance of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn’s largest historically black community, through the lens of a coming-of-age young American negro artist living at the dawn of an era in which urban class warfare is politely referred to as gentrification. Bookended by accounts of two different breakups, from a roommate and a lover, both who come from the white American elite, the book oscillates between chapters of urban bildungsroman and a historical examination of some of Bed-Stuy’s most salient aesthetic and political legacies. Filled with personal stories and a vibrant cast of iconoclastic characters— friends and acquaintances such as Spike Lee; Lena Dunham; and Paul MacCleod, who made a living charging $5 for a tour of his extensive Elvis collection—Making Rent in Bed-Stuy poignantly captures what happens when youthful idealism clashes head-on with adult reality. Melding in-depth reportage and personal narrative that investigates the disappointments and ironies of the Obama era, the book describes Brandon Harris’s radicalization, and the things he lost, and gained, along the way.

Download or read book The Brooklyn Navy Yard written by and published by powerHouse Books. This book was released on 2009-12-08 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York City's largest and oldest industrial facility, thehistoric Brooklyn Navy Yard occupies 250-acres on the EastRiver between the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges, andis presently one of New York City's major industrial sites. Oneof the last remnants of Brooklyn's industrial supremacy, theYard has experienced tremendous change: functioning from theage of wind to that of diesel. As a cradle of naval evolution,the Yard has had to reinvent itself constantly, and this is madeevident by the presence of buildings and structures spanningfrom the 1830s to the 1950s. The Navy Yard was shut downin 1966 and reopened again in 1971 when the City of NewYork bought it with the intention of redevelopment. Great shipsare still repaired there, and the Yard, now an industrial parkwith a variety of manufacturers and light industries, functionsas a refuge from a city that has mostly forgotten that a mixedeconomy is a key to its survival. The Brooklyn Navy Yard, the first monograph by JohnBartelstone, offers a quiet and striking look at the Yard asa time capsule of industrial New York. The Yard today is afusion of the sublime and the practical, with eerie abandonedelements existing side by side with vibrant businesses.Bartelstone's camera is partial to the former. The imagesshow a place out of time, where World War II New York is stillpalpable. Bartelstone has been photographing the buildingsand structures of the Yard since 1994. His photographs areneither a history of the Navy Yard nor a depiction of its role asa modern industrial park; the book instead offers a structuredimpression of a dreamscape.

Download or read book Deep Down in Brooklyn written by Ed German and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2011-06-17 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My book is a memoir about growing up in Brooklyn in the 50s and 60s. The title is Deep Down in Brooklyn. It is an illustrated book, 400 pages with 127 historic and personal photographs. It is a story largely untold and in great detail about urban living, and includes service with the Marines in Vietnam. I've lived all over New York and now live on Eastern Long Island where I host a nightly jazz radio program at Long Island's Public Radio station, WPPB - Peconic Public Broadcasting 88.3 FM. My program is heard Monday to Friday evenings, 8pm - 11pm. I have been on the air for over 14 years.

Download or read book Just a Kid from Brooklyn written by Henry Aimer Harrison III and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2015-11-04 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just a Kid from Brooklyn was initially written to provide my children and their children with a family history before it was forever lost. I also wanted to leave behind a smooth glide path through life for generations not yet born. This is my story, but it may be everymans story. It is a story about meeting head-on the challenges and struggles that we face every day and the choices that we make when we are faced with them. Some people use adversity as an excuse for failurealways the victim. For others, failure is an opportunity to try again; you always have another chance. My story is meant to inspire readers to exercise their inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness, as cited in the Declaration of Independence, whether its discovery, adventure, achievement, or even money.

Download or read book When Brooklyn was the World 1920 1957 written by Elliot Willensky and published by Harmony. This book was released on 1986 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.