Of Cabbages and Kings County: Agriculture and the Formation of Modern Brooklyn

Rating:
Summary: Required reading for Brooklyn history buffs
Review: I am a born-in-Brooklyn lifelong New Yorker and local history buff. I found this book engrossing and highly informative in areas (agriculture, farming and land use) most local histories ignore.

It is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how the outer boroughs of New York developed.

The photos are a hoot - showing long-urban areas as utterly unrecognizable farmland.

The book's only shortcoming is the author's boilerplate Marxist analysis of how land and capital are used in a modern economy.

With that one caveat, I heartily recommend this weighty tome for anyone seriously interested in New York outer-borough history.