Winner of the Herbert H. Lehman Prize by the New York Academy of History.
In The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn, Stuart M. Blumin and Glenn C. Altschuler tell the story of nineteenth-century Brooklyn's domination by upper- and middle-class Protestants with roots in Puritan New England. This lively history describes the unraveling of the control they wielded as more ethnically diverse groups moved into the "City of Churches" during the twentieth century.
Before it became a prime American example of urban ethnic diversity, Brooklyn was a lovely and salubrious "town across the river" from Manhattan, celebrated for its churches and upright suburban living. But challenges to this way of life issued from the sheer growth of the city, from new secular institutions-department stores, theaters, professional baseball-and from the licit and illicit attractions of Coney Island, all of which were at odds with post-Puritan piety and behavior.
Despite these developments, the Yankee-Protestant hegemony largely held until the massive influx of Southern and Eastern European immigrants in the twentieth century. As The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn demonstrates, in their churches, synagogues, and other communal institutions, and on their neighborhood streets, the new Brooklynites established the ethnic mosaic that laid the groundwork for the theory of cultural pluralism, giving it a central place within the American Creed.
Table of Contents:
Prologue: America's Brooklyn
1. Brooklyn Village
2. The City of Brooklyn"
3. On the Waterfront
4. Toward a New Brooklyn
5. Newcomers
6. Transformation
7. Acceptance, Resistance, Flight
Epilogue: Brooklyn's America
About the Author :
Stuart M. Blumin is Emeritus Professor of American history at Cornell University. He is the author or coauthor of several books including The Emergence of the Middle Class, Rude Republic, and The G.I. Bill.
Glenn C. Altschuler is Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the author or coauthor of twelve books, including Rude Republic, The G.I. Bill, and Cornell: A History, 1940–2015.
Review :
Blumin and Altschuler's Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn deftly traces Brooklyn's transformation from a post-Puritan enclave separated conveniently from sinful Manhattan by the East River to a modern swirl of urban ethnicities, races, religions, and classes, perhaps not Queens with parks and trees but not far away. Smoothly written, smartly analyzed, and deeply researched, The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn becomes An American Story, as its subtitle promises — a wonderfully satisfying book whose final sentences convey just how powerfully our past can illuminate our troubled present if we let it.
(Gotham, A Blog for New York City Scholars) Writing of Brooklyn's history with a notable tone of delight and exuberance, Blumin and Altschuler trace the transformation of early 'Breucklelen,' as the Dutch called it, into a suburban 'City of Churches' dominated by New-England style Puritanism and yet again into the ethnically diverse borough of New York City we recognize today.
(Journal of Urban History)
