I’m sure it’s a good book, but its title had an accidentally bad effect — by suggesting that a “tree growing in Brooklyn” was somehow remarkable, it made me think that Brooklyn, and for that matter New York City, was a brick-and-concrete wasteland free of trees. I remember being stunned the first time I visited, in the summer of 1977, to find that Brooklyn is in fact covered with trees.

I’ve asked other friends who grew up far away from New York City, and they all report the same thing — they figured that there must be something unusual about a tree growing in Brooklyn.