Published in October of 2015, this history of New York City's most beleaguered waterway has received the some accolades:

This is a loving and skillfully rendered portrait of an important and oddly charming part of New York. - Mason B. Williams, NYT

Edifying... – Sam Roberts, NYT

This well-researched, jauntily written, knowledgeable book explains a lot about our funky, much-abused, lovable waterway, not only to those like myself who live near its shores, but to anyone with an appetite for urban history and a desire to fathom the dramatic, contradictory transformations affecting metropolises today. – Phillip Lopate, author of Waterfront

Alexiou takes a figurative dive into the infamously polluted Gowanus Creek in this engrossing narrative of Brooklyn's development amid shifting economic cycles...Alexiou draws profound and amusing comparisons between the historical Gowanus and the Brooklyn of today as he looks at population, city politics, and the ways humans both rely upon and shortsightedly destroy nature. – Publishers Weekly

Alexiou handles this complicated waterway’s history with admirable finesse, dogged research, and an enthusiasm as infectious as his subject. – Richard Kreitkner, BK Mag