The real NYC ...

... A Legible Story of Place by Brian Patrick Eha - City Journal.

Described by the author as “a hybrid of literary biography, literary analysis, and urban history,” Literary Brooklyn charts the tumultuous development of the borough from Walt Whitman’s time there to the present. And I do mean charts: the front matter includes a map identifying the residences of more than a dozen authors in various Brooklyn neighborhoods. Richard Wright alone has eight listings. The book’s progression is chronological: major authors get a chapter apiece, while minor or more recent figures share space with their contemporaries. Through their words we experience life in Brooklyn’s various ethnic enclaves. The overall impression is of successive waves of newcomers—German, Italian, Jewish, black—flooding into the borough before slowly giving way to successors.