Mike's Reviews > The Gangs of New York

I learned about this book from Borges' short essay "Monk Eastman, purveyor of iniquities," and have been meaning to check it out for some time, but only when I stumbled across this edition -- which was published to coincide with the Scorsese film -- did I pick it up. The foreword to this edition, fittingly enough, is actually the Borges essay.
Asbury wrote several books collecting sensational crime stories (the others focus on Chicago, New Orleans, and San Francisco). This one, on New York, is the most famous. (I haven't read the others but I assume the fact that New York is the oldest and most populous of the cities covered accounts for a lot.)
Asbury attempts to give some historical background, but tends to dwell on the most sensational events and does not shed much light on the "why"s of the gangs. Instead he tells interesting, even shocking, stories of the gangs and their most infamous members. We meet the real Hell-Cat Maggie (who filed her teeth to points and wore brass claws into brawls) and other unlikely gang leaders, including the entirely legendary Mose the Bowery Boy, who stood over 8 feet tall. We learn about the original "Hole in the Wall" bar -- run by Gallus Meg, a massive woman who was both the owner and the bouncer, and who collected ears from unruly customers. I was most impressed to learn of the pirates of the Hudson River, who raided docked ships and sold their booty to pawn shops, and numbered in the hundreds. There are ton of interesting tidbits, interspersed with some repetitive accounts of feuds and assassinations.
The reader can pick up a few bits of socio-economic and political information to help give the astonishing level of gang activity some context, but about halfway through it becomes a little repetitive. Things pick up a bit near then end of the book when the Tongs are introduced, but eventually the book just runs out of steam.
Still, it is pretty absorbing, especially in the first half. If I read more of his gang histories, I will probably give myself permission to skim more and skip sections.