Helmreich's chatty Baedeker is a hefty, multifaceted deep dive into New York's popular and most populous borough. He trekked 816 miles from Greenpoint to Cypress Hills, organizing the borough's 71 square miles into 44 communities along the way. New Yorkers and tourists alike can discover the borough's only Cambodian temple, a 1652 farmhouse described as the city's oldest surviving structure ... Read moreand a former mansion transformed into an inn in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Sam Roberts, New York Times Even Brooklyn residents will learn something new in this inclusive book, the first of five planned New York City walking guides... Helmreich's narrative focuses on the unusual and unknown, providing street maps ... of Brooklyn's 44 distinct neighborhoods, equaling 71 square miles... Crisp pictures, such as those of Mrs. Maxwell's Bakery
New York's largest party cake store
safety tips, and an impressive bibliography are welcome additions to an appealing work for locals, tourists, and urban explorers.
Library Journal Both a sit-and-read title and one to consult on the go, Helmreich's guide is chock-full of Brooklyn-insider details from the author's own extensive walking explorations. It's the first of five planned volumes, one for each New York City borough.
Booklist Helmreich's upbeat book is built around walking Brooklyn's streets day and night, and also talking to people he encounters. He sees Brooklyn as diverse and ever changing... From Greenpoint to Coney Island, every section is given a chapter, with Helmreich focusing on less known aspects of these neighborhoods.
Leonard Quart, Berkshire Eagle [Helmreich] knocks around all forty-four neighborhoods, all seventy-one square miles, and may well have wished a good day to each of the borough's 2.6 million inhabitants. Helmreich is smitten with Brooklyn; I'll even take the liberty of saying he loves the place, loves the whole city. He's the kind of guy who asks questions... He knows there are parts of Brooklyn that can only be disarmed by common decency
not that he isn't commonly decent... That takes a special, radiant aura of street credibility. He also knows the power of laughter, and when to laugh.
Peter Lewis, Barnes and Noble Review Professor and historian William Helmreich follows up his successful tome The New York Nobody Knows
for which he canvassed every single NYC block, covering 6,000 miles
with a Brooklyn-specific edition, sharing stories of the unlikely characters and places he met along the way. (And yes, more books about the other four boroughs are coming, too).
Amy Plitt, Curbed Show Less