Rating: 
Summary: When New York was really wicked
Review: "Gangs of New York" is an energetic and entertaining history book, detailing a time in American history that most people, myself included, are largely ignorant of. It tells the tale of the creating and the taming of one of the US's great cities, once a den of crime and vice unimaginable in today's society. Murderers for hire, unbelievable multi-storied monuments to prostitution and drinking, riots and the like are laid out in grim detail.Gangs like The Dead Rabbits, The Plug Uglies, The Gophers, The Daybreak Boys and The Bowery Bois ruling vast sweeps of New York turf like The Five Points, Hell's Kitchen and Satan's Circus...names to conjure with. Add into this setting a cast of characters such as Hell-Cat Maggie, Kid Twist, Gyp the Blood and the Paul Bunyonesque character of Mose the Bowery Boi, who even then was known to be a Tall Tale and not a real person, and you have the recipe for some interesting history. However, the book is not all shock-value exploitation. While written with an eye for excitement, these are real stories of real people, complete with photographs of several prominent gangsters and magazine artwork from the time illustrating the manuscript. It tells you something of the creating of a city, and how structures are put into place and wildness is tamed. I was surprised to find out that The New York Times is older than the New York Police Department. A newspaper was a greater priority than either a police department or a fire department. Anyone expecting an adaptation of the film, however, will be disappointed. Scorsese pulled characters from history and jumbled them altogether, regardless of the years separating their lives. It would be like a Western featuring Jessie James, Billie the Kid, Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hitchcock, Bat Masterson and several others who were not alive at the same time. Also, this is a history book, so there is no story as such. Just the passage of time.
Rating:
Summary: When New York was really wicked
Review: "Gangs of New York" is an energetic and entertaining history book, detailing a time in American history that most people, myself included, are largely ignorant of. It tells the tale of the creating and the taming of one of the US's great cities, once a den of crime and vice unimaginable in today's society. Murderers for hire, unbelievable multi-storied monuments to prostitution and drinking, riots and the like are laid out in grim detail. Gangs like The Dead Rabbits, The Plug Uglies, The Gophers, The Daybreak Boys and The Bowery Bois ruling vast sweeps of New York turf like The Five Points, Hell's Kitchen and Satan's Circus...names to conjure with. Add into this setting a cast of characters such as Hell-Cat Maggie, Kid Twist, Gyp the Blood and the Paul Bunyonesque character of Mose the Bowery Boi, who even then was known to be a Tall Tale and not a real person, and you have the recipe for some interesting history. However, the book is not all shock-value exploitation. While written with an eye for excitement, these are real stories of real people, complete with photographs of several prominent gangsters and magazine artwork from the time illustrating the manuscript. It tells you something of the creating of a city, and how structures are put into place and wildness is tamed. I was surprised to find out that The New York Times is older than the New York Police Department. A newspaper was a greater priority than either a police department or a fire department. Anyone expecting an adaptation of the film, however, will be disappointed. Scorsese pulled characters from history and jumbled them altogether, regardless of the years separating their lives. It would be like a Western featuring Jessie James, Billie the Kid, Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hitchcock, Bat Masterson and several others who were not alive at the same time. Also, this is a history book, so there is no story as such. Just the passage of time.
Rating: 
Summary: EYE OPENER
Review: 40 years ago I picked up, by complete chance, Gangs of New York. I was completely knocked out by the book. Plug uglies, Dead Rabbits, Monk Eastman et al. It was a real eye opener to the history of crime and N.Y.C..
To learn that my favorite crime director, Martin Scorcese, was at the helm of a movie version of the book put me in a delerious mood. If you want to read an entertaining book of little known history, I highly recommend Gangs Of New York.
Rating:
Summary: Rollicking good read
Review: A breezy, in-your-face tour into the bowels of the New York slums of the 19th and eary 20th century. Don't be so foolish as to confuse Asbury's telling of the legend of Mose the Bowery Boy as straight history as some previous reviewers do; Asbury is obviously writing this part tongue-in-cheek.
The sections on the Old Brewery and the Draft Riots are particularly interesting. I wonder how the denizens of the Old Brewery could get food since Asbury claims that they neither leave the dwelling nor enter for fear of attack! Asbury's account is lifted wholesale and put into another true crime classic Bloodletters and Badmen.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining perhaps, but fails as a history book
Review: After seeing the movie I was intrigued to find this book, the supposed "true story" behind the movie. Getting the "truth" here, however, is very unlikely. The draft riot was of specific interest to me as someone who's researched and written about protest (violent and non-violent), political events, the military, etc. Unfortunately, it's quite obvious that Asbury wasn't interested in doing a history or sociology textbook when he put this together more 70 years ago. For example, the police are referred to as "heroic" and "valiant" while the rioters are depicted as monsters and animals. None of this helps explain why these events occurred. Instead, Asbury takes sides - which severely limits the book's worth if you're wanting to learn more about this forgotten piece of US history. It's certainly not a serious study of what caused the riot and the various brutalities committed by _all sides_. It's hard to believe that this book is the source material for the movie. If you're seriously wanting to learn about the gangs, riots and turmoil in NYC during this era - the true story by behind the movie - then you'll want to look elsewhere. If you're interested in seeing some of the propaganda that was created regarding these events, some of the yellow journalism and tabloid style writing that existed in the 1920s and 30s when this text was written, then you might get something out of this book. On that merit alone - as flawed journalism - perhaps this book is worth a read.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining perhaps, but fails as a history book
Review: After seeing the movie I was intrigued to find this book, the supposed "true story" behind the movie. Getting the "truth" here, however, is very unlikely. The draft riot was of specific interest to me as someone who's researched and written about protest (violent and non-violent), political events, the military, etc. Unfortunately, it's quite obvious that Asbury wasn't interested in doing a history or sociology textbook when he put this together more 70 years ago. For example, the police are referred to as "heroic" and "valiant" while the rioters are depicted as monsters and animals. None of this helps explain why these events occurred. Instead, Asbury takes sides - which severely limits the book's worth if you're wanting to learn more about this forgotten piece of US history. It's certainly not a serious study of what caused the riot and the various brutalities committed by _all sides_. It's hard to believe that this book is the source material for the movie. If you're seriously wanting to learn about the gangs, riots and turmoil in NYC during this era - the true story by behind the movie - then you'll want to look elsewhere. If you're interested in seeing some of the propaganda that was created regarding these events, some of the yellow journalism and tabloid style writing that existed in the 1920s and 30s when this text was written, then you might get something out of this book. On that merit alone - as flawed journalism - perhaps this book is worth a read.
Rating: 
Summary: Incredibly Boring
Review: All I need to say is that this book is immensely boring. It is like one, long column in a newspaper. It is not well written and it did not grab my continuous interest. I do not recommend this book at all. This was an interesting topic not satisfylingly portreyed.
Rating:
Summary: Plug Ugly America
Review: America was never so violent as it was in the decades that flanked the Civil War, and Asbury sketches the immigrants, gangsters, gamblers and river pirates that ruled the slums of Five Points with a deft, half-loving hand. I was especially surprised to learn how politics fueled the gangs' long reign, each party keeping its own thug army to riot and break ballot boxes on command. Today's problems with guns, race prejudice and political apathy look like an ice cream social next to Asbury's New York, which ran on the kind of offical gangsterism you associate most often with the Third World. No wonder Scorsese picked this up--it takes "Goodfellas" to the tenth power. At the same time, Asbury hints at the rigid codes of honor that governed gang life, another Scorese trademark. The book evokes a forgotten America where the line between criminal and respectable was less rigid. I can't say I'd want to live there, but while it was more lawless, Asbury also leaves you wondering if it was maybe, just maybe, a little more free. At the very least, it puts some of our own 21st-century angst into perspective. A fun, easy read.
Rating:
Summary: Now I Can't Wait for the Movie to Come Out.
Review: Among the many special things that make this book a real treasure is that it was written in the mid 1920's. Without knowing what the future would bring Asbury concludes that the age of the gangs is over. And, in a way he is correct. Of course he could not foresee the development of gangs in the second half of the twentieth century, but he does successfully describe the changes in demographics and size that took place during the nineteenth. The later truly amazed me in that during the period of about 1840 to 1870 the shear size of the gangs that terrorized Manhattan, and its environs, were enormous. Gangs numbering in the thousands in an area of less than half of Manhattan is quiet frightening. Their relationship to political machines such as Tammany Hall and the Know Nothings insulated them from the long arm of justice.
Asbury also does a wonderful job of describing the rocky evolution of the New York City Police Department. Good or bad the heroics and sacrifice of the New York City Police during the 1863 Civil War Draft Riots should never be forgotten.
I highly recommend this book. If you have experienced New York then you owe it to yourself to compare then and now.
Rating:
Summary: Jewel in the Town
Review: As a contemporaneous take on nineteenth-century New York, this book is like an uncut gem found beneath an attic eave. Unpolished by political correctness, it supplies the reader with a raw perspective on a multicultural cityscape that bred probably the worst urban violence the land has seen. Modern scholarship has sometimes accused the author of exaggeration or outright mistake. But as far as cold, hard facts are concerned, there seems to be no glaring instance to which one can definitely point. A present-day historian may criticize Victorian views on class and ethnicity, but how can those removed by a century and a half know data better than a contemporary? Like much literature of the times, this volume makes for somewhat weighty reading, but is an invaluable resource for those interested in the subject.
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