Just a few. In 1849, youll like this one, a chemist named charles fries at one of the many german immigrants to arrive during that period opened what would be, one of the Largest Pharmaceutical Companies in the world. You probably know and revere his company for inventing such a surge of products of modern life as zoloft, lipitor, and let us not forget, viagra. Over the years, Companies Like pfizer employed millions of immigrants in brooklyn neighborhoods and businesses grew to accommodate them but history is to go. Brooklyns fortunes shifted in the second half of the 20th century. The factories that has sustained so Many Americans started to leave. Not for china and mexico, as is the case today, but for far less crowded and more truck friendly and reconcile birds. In 1957 when dodger owner Walter Omalley broke the heart of every redblooded brooklynite by taking the beloved baseball team, dem bums as they referred to by locals, to los angeles, in retrospect it seems to foretell the boroughs sorry fate. By the 1960s waterfront was becoming a sad, inking shell of its former self. In 1966 the navy yards which, during world war ii had been the largest and bestknown employer was decommissioned. By the time i moved there, about a mile away from the navy yard, it was home to a few operating warehouses, but mostly acres of into buildings, feral dogs, and the occasional body that again reportedly dumped by one of brooklyns legendary wiseguys. There were still plenty of holdovers at the time that we moved in, from early waves of immigrants. Our nextdoor neighbor were an elderly irish couple who had once taken in borders, and so many did in the brownstone areas of brooklyn during the depression and in the decades following. They were now being paid by the city of new york to house elderly. Many of them sick and moaning, and that was a musical accompaniment of march, childrens early years. Hopefully they cant remember it. In fact, brooklyn was actually losing population. Years later the writer pamela grow in workingclass park slope would say about this time, you heard it over and over in those days. We got to get out of brooklyn. And you know what, a lot of people dead. So the question that i had in my mind as i approached this book was how did the old brooklyn become the new brooklyn . The place that g2 magazine called, and i still cant read this without laughing the coolest city on the planet. How is it that when i moved to park slope Liquor Stores have bulletproof cages to protect the cashiers, and then the picture windows and free tastings of the expansive and expensive pinot noir selections. How can a a point in history as we did in the fall of 2015 where the fabled Parisian Department store had come spend a month celebrating brooklyn mania with an exhibit called brooklyn how can the only chic parisian be so interested in buying products either made in brooklyn or soon as they could be more are eaten by a brooklynite . Or at least a parisians idea of a brooklynite. And one final question. Why should anyone care what happened to brooklyn . A place isnt even a city, its a borough. It has 2,600,000 people in the city of 8 million come in a country of 330 million. Whats the big deal . But i try to get into book, the reason should be interested is is a microcosm for the vast economic and social changes that have been roiling our politics, and should be mentioned the politics of western europe. Over the past 30 or 40 years advanced economies like that of the United States have been shifting away from manufacturing, or to put it very crudely, making stuff, towards knowledge and information, or aching to be crude, thinking about stuff. New york city was already coming the u. S. Capital of that economy of the 1960s, and corporations centralized and moved their headquarters to downtown in midtown. By the end of the 60s, 59 of the new the new york City Labor Force was in whitecollar occupations. This gave new york a real competitive advantage over other fading industrial cities. Most of the people who were whitecollar, they were predominantly men who were working downtown took the fight 15 train to new rochelle, just like rod petrie, played by dick van dyke, the fictional husband of laura petrie, played by mary tyler moore, who i did want to mention today. But a few of those whitecollar workers, especially in more creative types in media started moving at a largely workingclass brownstone brooklyn. They were gentrifying comedies a word that only became popular many decades later. Brooklyn heights, park slope, perhaps you can trace those loaded on your map, these are all lovely 19th century brownstone neighborhoods that had gone into disrepair. Over the next decades, the number of whitecollar workers increased as did the number and variety of whitecollar jobs in new york. Government was expanding and sewer colleges and universities, and along with them jobs for lawyers, administrators and professors. By the 2000s, technology was opening up new occupations for the educated and creative young, including occupations people have never heard of before. The kiln operators at the domino Sugar Refinery may be gone, but the new brooklyn has many thousands of web designers, developers and social media consultants. The house next door to me that referred to earlier is a perfect illustration of the shift from the older to the new knowledge economy. Its really justification in a single brownstone. I always mentioned it was an elderly irish couple living there. The husband, who like other immigrants had been here long enough, had a Civil Service job, had been a postal worker while his wife had been in charge of the borders, as i mentioned before. Fastforward 15 years. The house was sold, renovated and subdivided into condominiu condominiums. Marble bathrooms, granite counters, recessed lighting, the whole deal. The first people to move in were people that you would never have met in the old brooklyn, an architect and his wife, a furniture designer. An editor at real simple and her husband also an editor at a music magazine. A wall street trader soon moved in after with his wife, a freelance writer and their three children. Same block, same house, old brooklyn, new brooklyn. You can watch is other programs online at booktv. Org. Sunday night on after words the public president candidate and how governor don casey discusses his new book john kasich. Is interviewed by former new jersey governor Christine Todd whitman. You talk in the book about trump won and we should learn something from that. I have posited for a long time the trumppence and his owners were two sides of the same coin. They were the frustrated, the angry, they scared people and he didnt care whether the person theyre sporting could actually do what they said theyre going to do, all they cared about was they said theyre going to do something. Do you think congress has learned its lesson . I think congress is so dysfunctional. The congress is going like this , and by the way, people gave up bowling and watching Cable Television and now theyre very impatient and demanding of their representative and compromise is like the