History of Brooklyn

De: Brian Purnell, The Great Courses

Narrado por: Brian Purnell

If you look closely at the City of New York, you will find that it does not conform to a single, all-encompassing metropolitan identity. Rather, the city is made up of five boroughs—districts that operate almost like their own, smaller cities, with their own distinct identities and histories. Located on the western end of Long Island is the most populous of these singular regions: Brooklyn. And its rich and varied past deserves a closer look.

Over the course of the 11 lectures of The History of Brooklyn, Professor Brian Purnell will lead you through the story of this vibrant settlement, from the time when Native Americans fished and farmed the area all the way up to Brooklyn’s present-day renaissance. Throughout this exploration, you’ll see that Brooklyn has always been much more than merely a part of New York City. You’ll meet the many people and witness the various events that shaped this neighborhood and made it a landmark in the story of America.

Brooklyn has been a place of thriving working class and immigrant communities, a place of literature and culture, where bountiful space enabled New York City to stretch out and become a global metropolis. Brooklyn’s constant social and economic ups and downs, its tensions and conflicts around race and class, its recent revival and renaissance are all windows into America’s wider national history.

When the British Army first arrived in the soon-to-be United States to quell the rising colonial rebellion, Brooklyn was where they landed. Centuries later, this region is, as it always has been, a microcosm of the larger social and economic trends shaping the nation. As the journalist Ralph Foster Weld wrote in 1950, “Brooklyn Is America.”

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A history lesson

Like sitting in a classroom being told the history of Brooklyn. A lot of good info but a very dry delivery.

Strong focus on racial bias influencing every aspect of the story

Overall performance seemed like a bored author reading his doctoral thesis out loud for the first time. I did enjoy the lecture on Coney Island. The rest of it was just a way to kill time on my commute to work.

Concise and engaging

A broad yet relatively short dive into the history of Brooklyn. Worth the time and filled with local knowledge.

This is a Great Course?

Very poor delivery of interesting material. Not anywhere near usual Great Course standard. It was an ordeal to listen to the halting, unskillful narration.

Excellent lecture series

As someone who grew up in Queens during the 50s and 60s, often visited relatives in Bedford Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, lived in Crown Heights and Flatbush during the early to mid 70s, I walked away from this lecture series with a deeper and broader understanding of the borough I experienced and thought I knew. I had a front row, participatory seat to busing, a quarter century of white flight to in particular Long Island. Then I watched the next generation, not wanting to spend 3-4 hours/day commuting by car or on the Long Island Rail Road to Manhattan move back to Manhattan and Brooklyn though, into planned gated and segregated communities and schools.

Knowing many of the 60-70-80s notable figures referenced Dr. Purnell gave this story a higher level of integrity. The only negative if you can call it that is you will get much more out of this series if you grew up or spent significant time in the NYC boroughs, if not Brooklyn itself. That said, these lectures demonstrated to me throughout the centuries how people of diverse cultures and ethnicities (particularly working class people) continue to survive uncertainties brought on by rapid change.

It's a must listen to series of history lessons we see increasingly played out throughout American metropolitan areas as they attempt to keep up with the gravitational forces of globalization. Let's all hope the canary continues to live.