By Dennis Holt
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BROOKLYN -- When one enters BookCourt on Court Street in Boerum Hill, a quick look left reveals a large shelf that has the Brooklyn collection.

A recent visit to this grand store, which will soon double its space, showed around 50 titles about Brooklyn, including children’s books.

About 20 years ago, there would have been no such thing. No one was writing about Brooklyn because no one was thinking about Brooklyn. Back then, tourist guides to New York mentioned Brooklyn as an afterthought, if that.

That, of course, has all changed. All of a sudden a lot of people are thinking about Brooklyn, and a lot of people are making Brooklyn their home for the first time. This is especially true of artists of all kinds, and no one really knows where this will all end.

The evolving Brooklyn reminds us that the past of Brooklyn is every bit as rich as what is making history today. And no one else has contributed more to the chronicling of Brooklyn's past that the Eagle's own history columnist, John Manbeck.

Now, Manbeck is at it again. He has pulled together 34 of his historical reports from the Eagle into a new book, “Brooklyn, Historically Speaking.� This is part of American Chronicles, a History Press Series.

Manbeck served as the official Brooklyn borough historian from 1994 to 2002. In that capacity, he was the consulting editor to another major work, “The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn.�

The earlier book is a must for anyone writing about Brooklyn in any capacity, and keeping it up to date is a big task. A second edition has already been released, and the 2010 census will demand a third edition, if only because of the dynamic demographics.

International historian Thomas Cahill, who produced the award-winning Hinges of History series, said in the opening sentence in his work on the Greeks, “History must be learned in pieces.�

Teachers who have put together a history course might frown on that argument, but whatever their course is, it is a collection of “pieces.�

Manbeck's new contribution to Brooklyn is composed of 34 “pieces.� Each of them is delightfully written and fun reading, and, of course, informative. It is the kind of presentation that you can put down, but is also one you will want to pick up again.

As “knowledgeable� as I think I am on Brooklyn history, there was something new for me in each piece.

The cover photo, repeated in a different perspective on page 103, is a rather haunting image. It shows a solitary person, bundled up because it's winter, sporting a derby and walking up the hill on Columbia Heights. His shadow suggests mid to late afternoon.

There are only three parts of the photo still with us -- the Brooklyn Bridge; former Franklin House, now occupied by Pete’s Downtown; and the building immediately to the left in the photo.

That building is now the property of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and everything down the hill till it ends is also the Witnesses’ property.

There are other fetching photographs in this 160-page book which, at $19.99, is a super bargain. Look for Manbeck at the Sept. 14 Brooklyn Book Fair.

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