If you look closely at the City of New York, you will find that it does not conform to a single, all-encompassing metropolitan identity. Rather, the city is made up of five boroughs—districts that operate almost like their own, smaller cities, with their own distinct identities and histories. Located on the western end of Long Island is the most populous of these singular regions: Brooklyn. And its rich and varied past deserves a closer look.

Over the course of the 11 lectures of The History of Brooklyn, Professor Brian Purnell will lead you through the story of this vibrant settlement, from the time when Native Americans fished and farmed the area all the way up to Brooklyn’s present-day renaissance. Throughout this exploration, you’ll see that Brooklyn has always been much more than merely a part of New York City. You’ll meet the many people and witness the various events that shaped this neighborhood and made it a landmark in the story of America.

Brooklyn has been a place of thriving working class and immigrant communities, a place of literature and culture, where bountiful space enabled New York City to stretch out and become a global metropolis. Brooklyn’s constant social and economic ups and downs, its tensions and conflicts around race and class, its recent revival and renaissance are all windows into America’s wider national history.

When the British Army first arrived in the soon-to-be United States to quell the rising colonial rebellion, Brooklyn was where they landed. Centuries later, this region is, as it always has been, a microcosm of the larger social and economic trends shaping the nation. As the journalist Ralph Foster Weld wrote in 1950, “Brooklyn Is America.”