Customer Reviews

Brooklyn's Best: Sightseeing, Shopping, Eating, and Happy Wandering in the Borough of Kings

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The world's oldest subway tunnel, the second largest art museum in America, and the greatest concentration of historic houses in New York. These are just three of "Brooklyn's Best" described in this book. Every time I visit New York I always spend time in Brooklyn and with this excellent guide in hand, I now have even more reasons to visit. Brooklyn is huge-it would be the fourth largest city in the States on its own. The authors, both Brooklyn residents, manage to pack an enormous amount of information in its compact 160 pages: shopping, sightseeing, restaurants and "happy wanderings." Few guides to New York City spend much time covering Brooklyn except for the three "B's"-the huge Brooklyn Museum (which has a real mummy), the Botanical Garden (go in May for the cherry trees), and the most famous bridge in New York (which happens to be named after Brooklyn.)

The book's chapters are short-usually two pages-and conducive to browsing. Before you know it you've read half the book and learned that Brooklyn has 93 ethnic groups, the Park Slope area has one coffee shop per adult resident, and the tallest building is the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower which, by the way, is every bit as impressive as anything in Manhattan. You'll also learn where to find the colonies of parrots that thrive in Brooklyn, or the floating barge that hosts chamber music recitals. From its colorful cover to its list of web sites, this is a handy and attractive guide to the best of Brooklyn.

This book might have once served as a good guide to my favorite part of New York City. But things change rapidly in Brooklyn and "Brooklyn's Best," published nearly a decade ago, is now so outdated that it is misleading.

Many of the shops, restaurants, galleries and venues lauded in the book have closed their doors; others have fallen in quality. Buildings that the book touts as "must-sees" have been torn down or closed to the public, landmarks have undergone major renovations and entire neighborhoods have changed in character and population.

There are good, new guidebooks to Brooklyn out there with much more current information. Until or unless the authors decide to issue a new edition of this book, do yourself a favor and avoid it.