Sometimes it seems like all of Brooklyn should be coated in sepia tones, so strong is the nostalgia surrounding it. To those who grew up or raised a family here in the 1930s, ’40s, or ’50s, Brooklyn is the land of stickball and egg creams, Old World relatives, Ebbets Field and the Loews and RKO movie palaces, the Parachute Jump and Shoot the Chutes rides at the beach. . . and of an accent that pronounces oi as er and vice versa (this accent is said to have originated in the neighborhood of Greenpernt).

Then there is 21st-century Brooklyn—artsy and cool, already dubbed the new Manhattan, and already incurring a backlash for it. Young people, families with small children, and Manhattan exiles who desire more room inside their homes and less crowding outside have been repopulating once-neglected neighborhoods, rediscovering the riverfront and old industrial lots, and opening art galleries, performance spaces, funky bars and coffeehouses, and trendy boutiques.

While this renaissance has renewed hometown pride in Brooklyn, there is a disconnect between today’s Brooklyn and the Brooklyn of so many cherished memories. Many of the newer Brooklynites grew up far from Kings County. They may not even know they’re supposed to hate Walter O’Malley for banishing the Dodgers to California, or Robert Moses for bulldozing a highway through their streets. And so we have a place defined by both the past and the future, a personality both nostalgic and on the cutting edge.

Of course, many other events have left their mark on Brooklyn—the devastating assault by the king’s army during the Revolutionary War, the high-bourgeois Victorian age, the lurid decline of the 1970s, to name just a few. Brooklyn has the unique history of having been an independent city and before that several different cities and townships. It also boasts of the great outdoors, with three parks of 450-plus acres and a shoreline that stretches from river to bay to ocean.

With all this diversity in its history, its geography, its very essence, Brooklyn is a most exciting place to explore up close and personal. . . the kind of exploring done best on foot. This book provides routes to follow and identifies points of interest, but you will set your own pace and make your own discoveries as you walk, choosing perhaps to spend time inside some place along the way or even veer off-course to see more of something that catches your fancy. You’re in the most walkable of cities, so get some comfortable shoes and have fun!