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Gowanus Crossing: A Brooklyn Boyhood
Author(s): Vincent Coppola (Author)
- Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
- Publication Date: June 9, 2026
- Language: English
- Print length: 256 pages
- ISBN-10: 1250904129
- ISBN-13: 9781250904126
Book Description
Brooklyn is a mythic place and the Gowanus Canal, pestilent and fertile, is its Nile. “Yous stay outta that f*cking water,” Uncle Honey used to warn us.
We never listened.
Mid-century Gowanus: Decades before the Whole Foods went up and the lofts were refurbished, a raucous, unruly, proudly Italian American enclave clings to the banks of the noxious canal. The Mafia and the Catholic Church―two centuries-old, rigidly hierarchical institutions defined by oppressive codes of silence―dominate the neighborhood.
In Gowanus Crossing, Vincent Coppola brings the world of his childhood ferociously to life. A second-generation Italian American, Coppola grew up in old Gowanus, a bookish kid for whom Park Slope, to say nothing of Central Park, might as well have been the moon. His journey through and eventually out of the neighborhood is harrowing, hilarious, and populated with a cast of characters who burst off the page: a four-foot-tall wiseguy who walks a lion on a leash, a predatory priest, mobbed-up undertakers, Coppola’s three wayward brothers, and a host of assorted schemers, scammers, mobsters, bookies, gamblers, and certifiable crazies.
Combining Frank McCourt’s gimlet eye with the exuberant menace of a Scorsese movie, Gowanus Crossing captures a lost world in all its glory.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for Gowanus Crossing
“Coppola’s deep affection for [Gowanus] permeates his episodic account of growing up in the kind of place that has vanished from the American landscape….Coppola’s vivid descriptions bring to life a thriving community.”
―The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“With powerful sentiment but no sentimentality, this memoir is beautifully written elegy to a vanished world.”
―Kirkus
“Fast-paced, vital, and characterized by a complicated nostalgia, this portrait of a bygone era is difficult to put down.”
―Publishers Weekly
“Sister Mary may have underestimated Coppola’s gifts, but readers will not. He has captured a bygone era in Brooklyn for posterity.”
―Shelf Awareness
“Riveting….Coppola’s engaging look back to the Brooklyn of his youth is a great selection for any collection.”
―Library Journal
“A moving and unputdownable memoir.”
―Booklist
“Elegiac and eloquent, hilarious and harrowing, Gowanus Crossing is a tribute to a lost, rough, but sometimes magical time and place. Vincent Coppola has written a must-read for all fans of Brooklyn, then and now.”
―Jeannette Walls, New York Timesbestselling author of The Glass Castleand Half Broke Horses
“I was part of the ‘wave of yuppie outsiders’ who swept into Vincent Coppola’s Italian American Brooklyn just after he escaped, then spent thirty-three contented years living a short walk from the Gowanus Canal. His stunning portrait of his clannish, working-class family and neighborhood in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s is sympathetic but unflinchingly clear-eyed, funny and sad. My abiding fantasy is time travel; this book was the next best thing.”
―Kurt Andersen, New York Times bestselling author of The Breakup and Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire
“Gowanus Crossing is one of the best coming-of-age books I’ve ever read, on a par with if not even better than The Liar’s Club, This Boy’s Life, and many others. It’s also one of the best New York books ever. It’s intensely evocative of time and place, heartfelt, sometimes terrifying sometimes very funny, often tragic, and a compelling read from first page to last.”
―Fergus Bordewich, author of Klan War
“Brooklyn newcomers should be handed this book with their lease. Vincent Coppola’s memoir of scrappy old-world Gowanus captures the passion, humor, and violence of his hardscrabble Italian childhood in the ‘toxic snow globe.’ A reminder that through all its incarnations the city has remained terrible and beautiful―extremely so.”
―Ada Calhoun,New York Times bestselling author of St. Marks Is Dead
“This book rocked me! It’s vivid, fun, moving, sometimes hair-raising, and informed by a lifetime of experience. Most of all, it tells true, wild stories from old-time hard-luck Brooklyn up to the semi-gentrifying present. A must-read for all fans of New York City.”
―Ian Frazier, author of Paradise Bronx
“Vincent Coppola’s lucky to be alive, judging from his memoir. Now his readers are the lucky ones. Gowanus Crossing is a brilliant work of storytelling.”
―Nick Taylor, author of Sins of the Father: The True Story of a Family Running from the Mob
About the Author
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