Rating: 
Summary: Brutally Violent and violently honest
Review: "America was born in the streets," was the logo that adorned all the posters advertising Martin Scorcese's magisterial work, "Gangs of New York." Kevin Baker's book does not have the revisionist aspirations that film-it does not maintain that the draft riots were the place where a clannish America began its descent into the abyss-but it is more lucid, lurid and much more faithful to the history of nineteenth century New York City than Scorcese's film, great as it is, is capable of being. The city that Baker describes is as violent and brutal as any town in medieval Europe, and the behavior of the enraged, drunken, and rioting rabble makes the Klan and more modern gun thugs look like amateurs.
The backdrop of the novel is quite obviously civil war New York City. Some characters have escaped slavery in the South and proved unable to find work in the city, survived the potato blight in Ireland and passage to New York that ranks with the slaves' "middle passage" to the Americas in brutality. Other characters have become connected with the politics of the city, or have gone south to fight in the Union Army leaving loved ones behind to agonize over their fortunes on the battlefield. The way that the war split the city along class and ethnic lines-with Tammany ward heelers talking as revolutionary reds and leading well organized flying squadrons against all symbols of Republican rule in the city-is both enlightening and frightening.
The wonderfully drawn descriptions of violence done to all symbols of any type of power or property are frightening. Watching a strike force organized by the powers that be to end the draft degenerate into a group of wild savages is one the most interesting fictional portrayals of crowd behavior that I have come across in literature. The recklessly brave actions by the overwhelmingly outgunned New York police in defense law, order and human life is enough to inspire nostalgia from even the most violent critics of their more modern behavior towards people who are decidedly not criminals. Also well done are the descriptions of the behavior of the volunteer fire companies that were responsible for the protecting the city from disaster by flame-if you have ever wondered why New York has no volunteer fire companies you will not after this book. Frankly, with the behavior of those companies that Baker describes, the fact that the city never suffered a massive fire like the one that virtually annihilated Chicago at the end of the nineteenth century an absolute miracle.
As a beginning primer for the history of New York City, this novel is a nonpareil. The smell of dogs, pigs, filth, excrement, sweat, sex, industry, and gun powder coupled with a combination of violent passions inspired by race, class, civil war, and the ambitions of all the men and women struggling to define, and redefine the meaning of the word "American," makes for an incredibly combustible situation, and an absolutely wonderful novel, well worth the time it takes to read.
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous Book...
Review: I bought a copy of Paradise Alley at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. This book was amazing, historical fiction at its finest. The descriptions of conditions during the Famine, on the ship to America, and the slums of NY were so vivid, I felt so much emotion for the characters. Very well done.
Rating: 
Summary: Paradise Alley - An excellent look at NYC during the 1860's
Review: I just finished Kevin Baker's "Paradise Alley". It's historical fiction about the New York Draft Riots during the Civil War. He cites as a reference the book "Gangs of New York" upon which the movie of the same name is based. Baker's goal was to portray an accurate account of the events. His goal definitely was not revisionism!The book is 600+ pages long and it tends to drag a little in spots but it is well worth the read. Baker uses the (sometimes maddening) device of each chapter being a viewpoint of one of the principle characters for some event. So when three folks witness a major event, you can bet you're going to read about the event three times. Be advised that the book is quite graphic in its descriptions of war and the riots...not for the faint of heart.
Rating: 
Summary: Very depressing and disturbing
Review: I was nervous picking up this book, since I thought the movie "Gangs of New York" was awful. Paradise Alley was exceptional. The text was a nice read, easy to understand, and a real page-turner. The characters are mostly simple folks, except for Robinson, who almost seems to be wishing he was a more simple man. The characters were not perfect, but they were all very believable. Johnny Dolan is a truly evil character. He was a gruesome person who did gruesome things. But he was believable, not in a Freddy or Jason slasher-movie way. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for some knowledge, on a subject which has sliped from most history books, while still being entertained.
Rating:
Summary: Drags on and on and on
Review: If it was not for the length of the book i would give it 4 stars, but not more. The book is overall about 7 characters, 3 of them who originally came to ireland, who live in NYC during the 1863 draft riots. The first 400 pages of the book are about Ruth, an irish girl, who came over to the US with Dolan (a brute she met over in ireland and who saved her life). His entire family died during the potato famine of the 40s and he's going to NYC where his Sister Deirdre lives. She is married to Tom who ends up going to war on her request. All those characters live on the same street, Paradise Alley. Because Dolan beats Ruth constantly, she finds a lover who cares for her, his name is billy dove and is black, which makes the affair all the more secret. On paradise alley also lives Maddy, a prostitute whose favorite customer is Herbert, a reporter for the NY tribune. So these are the main characters, and their lives are told for 400 pages, i'm not going to give any more details because they are boring, just like the first 400 pages are. It drags on and on and has nothing to do with the riot. It is indeed important to know the past of characters to understand why they behave certain ways, but 400 pages was way too much, 50 would have been enough. The author uses each chapter to talk about the lives of each characters. That's not a bad idea, some of the events are told several times through the eyes of different people. However, there is no chronology, the author keeps going back and forth in time constantly for no reason. When there is a chapter that actually gets exciting and suspensefull, the author stops it just as something is about to happen and comes back to it 300+ pages later. That's not a good way to build suspense, it's frustratin more than anything else. If it was not for the last 200 pages, this book would get 1 star. The last 200 pages are wonderfull. They describe the riots in great details, through the eyes of a journalist and also through the eyes of Billy Dove, a black man in the city trying to escape white's people's rage against his race. The details can be very gruesome and disturbing, the author spending several pages describing the torture of an irish soldier among other horrible events. It will make you sick to your stomach. While i was ready to stop reading the book after page 400, i'm glad i kept going. You wont' be able to put the book down until the end after then. Along with the description of the riots, you witness what happens to the main characters as their stories all come together in a terrible fight between neighbors. If you don't mind long readings or just love to read anything about life during the mid 1800's, this book is for you. If not, read a summary of the first 400 pages, and read the last part.
Rating: 
Summary: Bogged down in its own weight
Review: Sadly, this book did not live up to its hype for me. The author has crafted a truly fabulous, riveting story and created interesting characters, but the book suffers from his writing style and the chronological construction. Because the main plot action, the riot, is interrupted by the characters' various backstories, it feels like it takes forever to reach a climax and the book drags to its conclusion. I would also echo one reviewer's complaint about the author's excessive use of italics. I know it sounds nitpicky, but each page has several lines of italics, some of which appear without apparent reason. Are they meant to be the private musings of the character? Well, sometimes. At other times, they refer to lines already written; still other times, they appear to be simply regular sentences meant to move along the narrative. I can't emphasize enough how IRRITATING it is to be constantly "interrupted" by italics whose purpose is unclear! I think the author is a good storyteller and, for that reason, I will pick up "Dreamland," hoping it is as good as its reviews. But if I see that it has excessive italics, I will not read it!
Rating:
Summary: Suspenseful, enjoyable and pretty grim too
Review: This is a great story and is very well writtten. The gist of all the action is New York city during the days of the Civil War draft riots. However at the beginning of the book, the author frequently flashes back in time, and across the Atlantic to Ireland during the darkest days of the potato famine. It is in these chapters we learn about the early years of some of the characters who later found themselves together in New York City. At first, I thought this style to be annoying. But as the book unfolds, and the tension builds, the time, place, and characters become more and more focused on Paradise Alley, in the midst of the violence.
The description of the starvation and suffering during the famine is gruesome. And the account of the hatred, and violent atrocities during the riot is graphic and brutal.
A major source of suspense in the book is Dangerous Johnny Dolan, and his effort to get revenge on those he believes ruined his life. Johnny is as evil a villain as there could be! Hard to believe this was NYC (and America) only 140 years ago - pigs roaming the street freely, most people without any real employment or hope for the future, and a government that consisted mostly of corrupt, local thugs. The author seems to have done very thorough research and gives an excellent feel for what life was like at the time. You can even learn a little bit about how Central Park came to be, and the early days of the NYC water supply. There is even a glossary of terms at the end. The only criticism I can make is that there should have been a simple map of what NYC looked like at the time.
This is great historical fiction and I truly enjoyed it.
Rating:
Summary: Well Written and Expertly Researched
Review: This is one of my favorite novels since The Alienist by Caleb Carr. Kevin Baker's attention to detail is prevalent through both the character development and the description of the bloody riots too. Occasionally there is some slogging to be done, through descriptions of Ireland during the blight and some of the character's peripheral journeys. But for those who enjoy history, these descriptions will most liklely add color and only rarely become "work" to get through. Kevin Baker deserves high praise for the apparent amount of work he has put into this novel and for bringing an almost lost episode in New York City and American history back into popular consciousness again. As someone who has studied New York City extensively professionally and academically, I can wholeheartedly say that just about every detail in Paradise Alley is based on some true, albeit sometimes very obscure, bit of truth. The city was as filthy and violent as Kevin Baker makes it out to be and the great mass of its inhabitants at the time were equally, if unbelievably, miserable, ignorant, and generally unpleasant to be around. For the wealthy, then as now, the city was almost incomparable in what it had to offer. For everyone else, it was no small victory just to survive from day to day. Have things really changed all that much?
Rating:
Summary: Brutal Portrayal
Review: This novel is a brutally frank portrayal of the New York City draft riot of 1863. With flashbacks to the starvation and privation of the Irish during the potato famine and their travails getting to America, Mr. Baker draws a compelling picture of the immigrants and the city. He also sketches the racial hatred the Irish held for the blacks in the city.
Mr. Baker's descriptions are vivid and memorable. Some of his accounts of beatings and torture are sure to stay with the reader for a long long time.
His characters are also portrayed in a sometimes brutally frank manor. The novel is told from the perspective of half a dozen characters, most of whom are Irish. There are an Irish woman (her account includes flashbacks to Ireland) who marries a black man, a violent ne'er-do-well (also subject of flashbacks), a couple who have brought themselves up in the world - he a soldier and she a successful housewife and non-Irish prostitute, reporter (only first person narrative) and the black man.
I had some difficulty at the beginning of the book getting into the flow of the story as the set-up took several chapters since it was told by separate charcters who tales were somewhat slow in coming together in a cohesive manner. After that, the book flows and the writing excellent, especially the descriptive passages.
A caution: only one character is truly sympathetic and that is the black man. You want to root for his Irish wife too, but somehow you just can't. The other characters are nearly impossible to sympathize with which makes this book not a warm cuddly story. Warm and cuddly would not fit the three days of riots on which Mr. Baker focuses, however, so this is certainly not a criticism of the novel.
This book is recommended for a period of serious reading and thought. Not a light beach book by any means.
Rating:
Summary: Informative
Review: Welcome to Kevin Baker's New York. By 1863 the great metropolis had grown into a cruelly concentrated reflection of the greater nation, offering countless lives the tantalizing prospect of a lift from danger to hope, squalor to prosperity, and slavery to freedom. But 1863 was a singular time in the city's life, as in the country's, a time when the fragile fabric of civilization fell victim to a reckless, violent drive for freedom and survival. It's evident that Kevin Baker has a complicated relationship with New York. His main characters, by turns noble, desperate,
resourceful, feckless, and downright evil, all share a seminal drive for survival that propel them through impossible traumas and betrayals. From Ruth, the Irish peasant girl who runs from starvation in her homeland and washes up on American shores, to her frightening co-hort and erstwhile mate Dangerous Johnny Dolan, to her great love the ex-slave Billy Dove, her sister-inlaw Deirdre, and the cynical journalist Herbert Willis Robinson, each soul has a relationship with the city that either saves or destroys. And in New York, survival is not always the province of the good. Yet through this scrim of ruthlessness the author's affection for the city still shines through. His style of writing, though often subdued and painful, somehow gives voice to the intense possibility of the place. The crucible for his characters' lives, the draft riots of 1863, crack New York wide open and unleash a torrent of horrific violence. Yet by novel's end, despite some of the tragic and unresolved circumstances of the main characters, there's a sense of purging and redemption. The war, the riots, and all the hardships that came before all teach something about the need to strive for good. Historically Baker seems on firm ground with his subject matter, though a lay person might wonder about the author's take on race and repression. In particular, to an uninformed mind the development of the relationship between Billy Dove, the ex-slave, and Ruth, the Irish refugee with a scary and violent boyfriend, seems florid and far-fetched, a bit like "Mandingo" written as Harlequin romance. During these passages Baker loses control, falling back on a style less assured and honest than that displayed througout the rest of the book. It's an uncomfortable passage to read--a little embarassing, like a wrong note passed off as a right one in an otherwise flawless concerto. Some of the book's peripheral stories (i.e. those outside the city's vise) are gripping. Ruth's almost random flight from her starving family's home, her journey through the hell of Ireland's starving countryside, the harrowing journey across the Atlantic in a typhus infested ship with the psychotic, near dead Johnny Dolan--these are some of the most powerful passages in the whole work. This reader has never come in such intimate contact with the carnage and horror of that time. Billy Dove's escape up the East Coast on a makeshift sailboat, pursued by slave traders and sharks, also show Baker at his page-turning best. This book is a labor of love, and love is a complicated thing. Baker brings to it effective writerly instincts, a strong sense of character, and an clear desire to make history live. If it's a long book, it needs to be so. Baker has much to say, and he says it well, leaving the reader enriched, informed, and thoroughly entertained.
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