Michael Casper

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


Yale University Press 2021; paperback 2022

Coauthored with Nathaniel Deutsch, A Fortress in Brooklyn tells the story of how a group of determined Holocaust survivors encountered, shaped and sometimes fiercely opposed the urban processes that transformed their neighborhood, from white flight to gentrification.

Winner of a National Jewish Book Award, a Jordan Schnitzer Book Award and the Saul Viener Book Prize.


Praise for A Fortress in Brooklyn:


“This expert account enlightens.”
       —Publishers Weekly

“[A] meticulously researched study of Hasidic survival in Brooklyn.”
      —New York Review of Books

“Fascinating and colorful.”
       —Haaretz

“A brilliant study.”
       —The Forward

“Groundbreaking.”
       —Los Angeles Review of Books

׳׳אלעס איז באזירט אויף הונדערטער מקורות און דאקומענטן, אריינגערעכנט פון די היימישע צייטונגען.׳׳
       דער וועקער ––       
                        


A Fortress in Brooklyn is one of the most creative and iconoclastic works to have been written about Jews in the United States. This book makes you rethink everything you know about American Jewish history and identity.”
       —Eliyahu Stern, Yale University

“Anyone who wants to understand the peculiar dynamic that is contemporary Brooklyn needs to read this book.”
       —Deborah Dash Moore, author of Jewish New York

“Absorbing and well researched, it is a signal contribution to our understanding of Brooklyn in all its richness and complexity.”
       —Thomas J. Campanella, author of Brooklyn: The Once and Future City