By: Adam Gopnik, Perri Klass, Graeme Carey, Benjamin Wallace-Wells, Naomi Fry, Richard Brody, Joshua Rothman, Louisa Thomas, Justin Chang, Jennifer Homans, Anthony Lane, Nikhil Krishnan
Memorialized as the quintessential Brooklyn novel, it is really a book about leaving the borough—and escaping the poverty and brutality of immigrant New York.