World-renowned fundraising guru Stan Levenson takes readers on a loving and carefree thirty-year journey -- propelled solely by his own determination and sheer chutzpah -- starting in Depression era Brooklyn and continuing a lifestyle that crisscrossed the continent and the globe helping students, parents, and teachers.
Levenson provides a fascinating account of those Brooklyn neighborhoods so rich in culture and history and of his own rise from being a poor, fatherless kid during the Great Depression to becoming a world renowned fundraiser helping schools and school districts around the world reap millions of dollars in grants and gifts.
By his own admission, Levenson's early Brooklyn years were far from auspicious. A self-proclaimed “goof-off,” the author had little aspiration other than to immerse himself in games of basketball, stick ball and punch ball on the streets of Brooklyn and questionable capers at Coney Island. With remarkable moxie he managed to survive one of the roughest vocational high schools in New York City before embarking on a multitude of adventures that would take him around the country and across the globe.
Levenson vividly shows the days of a bygone Brooklyn, when neighborhoods were proudly and fiercely ethnic and cultures were bound by the rough economic times of the Depression and the concerns over World War II. He takes his readers on a tour of upstate New York, as well, and acquaints them with stories of the Borscht Belt never heard before, and the small college town where he studied to become a teacher and found himself in the awkward gropes of his first encounters with the opposite sex.
He ultimately earned a Ph. D., had a number of misadventures in the U.S. Navy and ended up – to his own great surprise – as a public school fundraiser extraordinaire and an author of four books on education, including Big-Time Fundraising for Today’s Schools, How to Get Grants and Gifts for the Public Schools, Readings in Foreign Languages for the Elementary School, and Exciting Bulletin Board Ideas for Reading and Language Arts. When Brooklyn Was Heaven will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will evoke a sense of nostalgia, and it will help to establish an historical perspective of the times. It is a must read for anyone with a New York connection, those who are fascinated by this joyful place, and all others who are intrigued by all the places “in-between.”
Levenson provides a fascinating account of those Brooklyn neighborhoods so rich in culture and history and of his own rise from being a poor, fatherless kid during the Great Depression to becoming a world renowned fundraiser helping schools and school districts around the world reap millions of dollars in grants and gifts.
By his own admission, Levenson's early Brooklyn years were far from auspicious. A self-proclaimed “goof-off,” the author had little aspiration other than to immerse himself in games of basketball, stick ball and punch ball on the streets of Brooklyn and questionable capers at Coney Island. With remarkable moxie he managed to survive one of the roughest vocational high schools in New York City before embarking on a multitude of adventures that would take him around the country and across the globe.
Levenson vividly shows the days of a bygone Brooklyn, when neighborhoods were proudly and fiercely ethnic and cultures were bound by the rough economic times of the Depression and the concerns over World War II. He takes his readers on a tour of upstate New York, as well, and acquaints them with stories of the Borscht Belt never heard before, and the small college town where he studied to become a teacher and found himself in the awkward gropes of his first encounters with the opposite sex.
He ultimately earned a Ph. D., had a number of misadventures in the U.S. Navy and ended up – to his own great surprise – as a public school fundraiser extraordinaire and an author of four books on education, including Big-Time Fundraising for Today’s Schools, How to Get Grants and Gifts for the Public Schools, Readings in Foreign Languages for the Elementary School, and Exciting Bulletin Board Ideas for Reading and Language Arts. When Brooklyn Was Heaven will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will evoke a sense of nostalgia, and it will help to establish an historical perspective of the times. It is a must read for anyone with a New York connection, those who are fascinated by this joyful place, and all others who are intrigued by all the places “in-between.”
