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The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn

An American Story

Glenn C Altschuler author Stuart M Blumin author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cornell University Press

Published:15th Sep '22

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn cover

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 detail how nineteenth-century Brooklyn was dominated by Puritan New England Protestants and how their control unraveled with the arrival of diverse groups in the twentieth century.

Before becoming a hub of urban diversity, Brooklyn was a charming "town across the river" from Manhattan, known for its churches and suburban life. This changed with the city's growth, new secular institutions, and Coney Island's attractions, which clashed with post-Puritan values.

Despite these changes, Yankee-Protestant dominance continued until the influx of Southern and Eastern European immigrants. The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn explores how these new residents built a vibrant ethnic mosaic, laying the foundation for cultural pluralism and embedding it in the American Creed.

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 Histo

  • Winner of Herbert H. Lehman Prize 2024 (United States)

ISBN: 9781501765513

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 24mm

Weight: 454g

296 pages