Tyler Anbinder

I appreciated this book as an excellent piece of historical research, but I fear that the publishers did themselves no favors by yowling that it was a source for the Scorsese film about the neighborhood, for this is a meticulous academic delve into ethnological minutiae. It is difficult to categorize this sprawl, but it is at bottom an ethnology, albeit one with innumerable tangents, some fairly relevant (e.g., Tammany Hall politics), others not (e.g., a mini-history of the Irish potato famine). In any case, readers looking for titillation or a healthy does of Scorsesean "neat" violence are likely to come away disappointed. I found readability fair at times, but most of his tangents and his painstaking analyses of national and even county origins of the residents of individual tenement buildings were of no interest; when presented tabularly they could be skipped or skimmed, but too often one had to wade through text.… (more)

This book is a well-written history of the famous Five Points neighborhood in New York City through the 19th century. The author documents the slums, murders, and drunkenness and provides real-life stories of the most notorious in this melting pot for poor immigrants. Ireland's potato famine, war, discrimination against Jews, and widespread poverty in mid-eighteenth-century Europe drove thousands to seek a better life in America. Some found the help they sought, but many were left to wallow in abject poverty, living in overcrowded tenement buildings and eke out a life on the streets. The Points was so famous that sometimes wealthy New Yorkers accompanied by police would tour through the poverty, brothels, brawling, and filthiness to glimpse into "life on the other side." It wasn't until laws were put in place to hold landlords accountable and most old buildings were razed in the early twentieth century that the worst slums disappeared.… (more)