The Brooklyn Heights Cookbook: One Hundred Favorite Recipes for Festive Occasions. [edited by] The Cookbook Committee. Designed by Barbara Knowles. Introduction by Jan Henry

[Brooklyn, N.Y.]: Published by The Friends of The Brooklyn Heights Youth Center, Inc, 1966. Octavo-sized Double Wire-O binding (23 x 15 cm.), 86 pages. Illustrated. Printed in brown ink throughout. FIRST EDITION. A curious and circuitous footnote to the radical politics of the Cold War era. A full history of The Brooklyn Heights Youth Center has yet to be written. Its origins lay in outreach programs for neighborhood teens sponsored by Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn, where the highly controversial figure, the Reverend William Howard Melish (1910-1986), served as Associate Rector. His most difficult years during the McCarthy scares (about which a pamphlet (truncated) by Arthur Miller circulated; Miller had written The Crucible in the Melish home) were behind him, but his social activism continued to stir discontent among the Episcopal Church's congregants. It was with Melish's family, in 1959, that Angela Davis came from Birmingham to live, having received an American Friends Service scholarship to study in New York. In the Spring of 1960 she undertook a social work requirement for her course of study at Holy Trinity, helping to organize a teen center that would eventually draw hundreds of young people to its events. When Melish was finally forced to leave his post, the center incorporated as The Brooklyn Heights Youth Center, under the directorship of Melish's wife, Mary Jane (1913-1999), and operated out of a storefront at 406 Atlantic Avenue. It seems The Cookbook appeared at the pinnacle of the Center's success: "Into the pot we poured all our available funds for trained workers and added volunteer helpers to assist with a program that hasn't stopped growing yet. Art...dance...sewing...reading...typing...pre-school activities...discussion groups...movies...dance...and just someone to talk to" (preface, page 5). From this point the thread is difficult to pick up, but the Center may still have been operating in 1976, when it surfaces in the papers of one of its strongest supporters, Helen Zunser Wortis – who is also listed here as a member of The Cookbook Committee. No lack of community spirit, then, underpins The Brooklyn Heights Cookbook, a fundraising project, but also an attempt to place on exhibit the international constitution of the surrounding neighborhood. A sampling of the most overtly titled: Danish Herring Balls; Zucchini Greek Style; Italian Clam Soup; Russian Borshch; Swedish Fruit Soup; Portuguese Pickled Fish; Mexican Stuffed Crabs; Chinese Ham; Hawaiian Chicken; Korean Steak. Text block is clean and sound. In publisher's stiff tan wrappers, titled in brown. Some very light toning to spine panel. Very near fine. Scarce. [OCLC locates six copies]. (Inventory #: 4909)