Brooklyn Al Primo Posto: Vincent Coppola’s Magical Memoir of the Church, the Mafia and the Gowanus Canal

About this episode

Vincent Coppola shares his experiences growing up in Brooklyn and discusses his memoir about the unique culture of his childhood neighborhood.

“I never knew, and I was a bright kid. I didn’t know who the mayor of New York was, but I could tell you the names of all the mafia guys on the corner.” — Vincent Coppola So we finally found a Coppola for the show. No, not Francis Ford. But somebody just as cool and even more authentic. The longtime Newsweek reporter Vincent Coppola grew up in Brooklyn three subway stops from Manhattan, but never went there until he was a teenager, nor even visited Central Park until his twenties. Coppola’s version of Brooklyn, a teeming Italian ghetto squeezed between the banks of the polluted Gowanus Canal, no longer exists. Except in his exquisitely rendered new memoir, Gowanus Crossing: A Brooklyn Boyhood , which has the most delicious story about an Easter pie recipe you’ll ever read. The Brooklyn of Vinnie’s childhood was intact, insular, cut off from everywhere more than three stops away. It had its own government — the Mafia; its own religion — the Catholic Church; its own poisoned geography — the Gowanus Canal. A world inside a world. He didn’t know who the mayor of New York was, but he knew the name of every wise guy on every street corner. To a kid, Gowanus was a magical place. The…

People in this episode

Host: Andrew Keen

Guest: Vincent Coppola

Topics covered

• Brooklyn
• memoir
• Mafia
• Catholic Church
• Gowanus Canal
• Italian culture

Keywords

• Brooklyn
• mafia
• memoir
• Gowanus Canal
• Vincent Coppola
• Italian ghetto
• Catholic Church
• New York

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Newsweek

Books & works: Gowanus Crossing: A Brooklyn Boyhood

Places: Brooklyn, Gowanus Canal, Columbia, New York, Central Park

More episodes of Keen On America

• The David Frum Show: Frum on Gatsby, Trump the Fascoid and What It Means to Be an American · June 12, 2026 · 50 min
• Save San Francisco’s Soul: Jonathan Weber on Technology and Politics in the City By the Bay · June 11, 2026 · 1h 5m
• Trump Finally Gets the Priceless Book He Deserves: Ben Fountain on How Rasputin Swims the Potomac · June 9, 2026 · 47 min
• The Unexceptional Exceptionalism of the United States: Michael Mandelbaum on the American Way of Foreign Policy · June 8, 2026 · 56 min
• The Jeffrey Epstein of Antiquities: Matthew Campbell on the Man Who Got Away With Stealing the Gods, · June 7, 2026 · 48 min
• D-Day for AI: How to Create an End Game That Will Benefit Everyone · June 6, 2026 · 38 min