Jenifer's Reviews > The Gangs of New York

Just because this was for me doesn't mean it was for everyone. I just love reading about the vice and crime that characterizes the history of New York especially in the time period discussed in this non-fiction book. Starting at about 1829 and ending when the book was written in 1928, it chronicles the worst parts of town and its inhabitants; tough tough men women and children who did unspeakable things to survive. They were sometimes colorful and sometimes pathetic and their way of life is just unimaginable to me.

At a time when a square mile of London's east end, the neighborhood so wrenchingly portrayed in the novels of Charles Dickens, contained 175,000 inhabitants, Now York's fourth ward had a population density of 290,000 per square mile in immigrant neighborhoods.

Fun to see how mixed up the gangs were with the polititians and labor unions. Those respectable institutions couldn't get it done without these guys!

I love how this was written "so long ago" that truthfulness seems no more important than legend and folklore. I love (and am sad) that many of the place names don't exist anymore. It is written in a voice that itself reminds the reader of a very different system of political correctness. A little tedious toward the end but by that time I was ready for stories about the mob!