A Fortress in Brooklyn, Michael Casper
A Fortress in Brooklyn, Michael Casper
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

A Fortress in Brooklyn
Race, Real Estate, and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg

Author: Michael Casper, Nathaniel Deutsch

Narrator: Steven Jay Cohen

Unabridged: 13 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/11/2021


Synopsis

The epic story of Hasidic Williamsburg, from the decline of New York to the gentrification of Brooklyn.

Hasidic Williamsburg is famous as one of the most separatist, intensely religious, and politically savvy communities in the entire United States. Less known is how the community survived in one of New York City's toughest neighborhoods during an era of steep decline, only to later oppose and also participate in the unprecedented gentrification of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper unravel the fascinating history of how a community of determined Holocaust survivors encountered, shaped, and sometimes fiercely resisted the urban processes that transformed their gritty neighborhood, from white flight and the construction of public housing to rising crime, divestment of city services, and, ultimately, extreme gentrification. By showing how Williamsburg's Hasidim avoided assimilation, Deutsch and Casper present both a provocative counter-history of American Jewry and a novel look at how race, real estate, and religion intersected in the creation of a quintessential, and yet deeply misunderstood, New York neighborhood.

About Michael Casper

Michael Casper received his PhD in history from UCLA and has contributed to American Jewish History and the New York Review of Books. He is coauthor of A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate, and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Frieda

Incredible! I’m not just liberal with platitudes. This blew my mind. I’ve been a tour guide in Hasidic Williamsburg for many years and I pretty much always did my own research because the stuff that’s published on this community is usually not good. This book GETS IT. And it does so with: 1. A stagge......more

Goodreads review by Umar

This was an amazing read and hats off to Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper for writing this. I'll further state that this book is extremely timely given the effect COVID-19 has had on all cities, but particularly New York City where population has decreased and there seems to be a sense the city......more

Goodreads review by Ben

In the late 1940s, two nascent Orthodox groups in the United States were Satmar Hasidim in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn and the German Breuer's kehila in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. At that time, if someone were to conjecture which group 70 years later would have multiple ex......more

Goodreads review by Kara

Fantastic! As a native NYer, history buff, former real estate professional and a Jew I loved it. Tons of detail, vocabulary words that sent me to the dictionary and best of all - very objective! Couldn’t have been easy.......more