Five Points: The 19th Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum

A bit dry, and at the same time very colorful. The author captured the conditions, and the people that lived there very well. It’s at one time, strange and understandable, how the people that wrote home wrote of the amazingness of America. Now, I am a dyed in the wool American, no question, but the circumstances in which these people found themselves, it was sheer determination for them to pull themselves up out of it. That is always to be applauded. My hat is off to the author, brilliant work.

Interested in reading more about the Gangs of New York setting? This is the only work dedicated to this small area of NYC. It details the collision of culture, politics, gangs, race, economics, city planning, riots, etc. Thick read at times but so much interesting content. Thank you!

Very well-written and researched history of the Five Points Neighborhood in New York City, from the early 19th century until its disappearance in the early 20th century, covering it as a living space for immigrants from Ireland, Prussia, Germany, Italy and China.Using primary and secondary source material (and confirming other sources with primary and secondary sources), Tyler Anbinder does an excellent job of describing the challenges that faced the immigrants who ended up in the Five Points as well as the living conditions that they lived in.Politics, social challenges, judicial challenges. It's all covered here. I suggest reading the notes as well, some tidbits of interest found there.Excellent history.

It’s really good. If you’re here you’re probably already interested in the subject. Don’t let any negative reviews divert you from purchasing this excellent account of the birth and death of one the most notorious neighborhoods of the time.

Beautiful book. Yes, it's history, which I personally love, but the story is told in a way that is incredibly readable. I couldn't put it down for 3 days and was sad when I reached the end. I'm very intrigued but the Irish experience and the history of Five Points, the Bowery and surrounding areas is so interesting. I'm anxious to read accounts like this that dive in to the setting that is covered here. After reading "Paradise Alley" by Kevin Baker, a fictional portrayal of the draft roits, based on facts, more than once and seeing Scorsese's "Gangs of New York", this book made me think, "yeah, this is what he was talking about". Can't wait to locate more titles like this as well as reread to see what I may have missed the first time around. Again, beautiful book. I highly recommend this book for anyone with even a passing interest in Five Points and the Irish immigrant experience.

I enjoyed reading this book. It was like a very eye opening history lesson. Enjoyable and informative.

This is a great book, about a now forgotten neighborhood in New York City.Anbinder, in a great narrative describes in great detail how the Five Points came to be, how and why it became a slum.Anbinder without being anti-immigrant, shows how the massive immigration waves of the 19th century along with the immigrants own ignorance of such things as what happens when you have as many as 26 people living in one room, along with the greed of the landlords who owned the tenements were at the root of many of the problems that the Five Points had.One word of warning, at times the book is emoitionally difficult to readsuch as the overcrowding in the tenements mentioned above, and the heart rending story of "Tatterd Maggie" a girl of 8 about years of forced to live on the streets of the Five Points because of her parents drinking problem.If you can get through these and other heart rending reads it is well worth it, you will truly be a better person for having read this book.

.....A fan of the Scorcese movie, I initially ordered this book instead of the classic Gangs of New York. Reviews said that Five Points was more accurate and didn't rely as much on contemporary yellow press accounts (unreliable). Unfortunately, accuracy doesn't always translate into interesting. FP reads more like a doctoral dissertation, and it contains all the statistics (pages of them) and graphs that such works are prone to. The result is dry, dry, dry as a bone in some parts. Some of the best writing is in the vignettes or "prologues" that begin each chapter. These take the impersonal history down to the street level, and we meet the individuals where they lived. The match girls, the pugilists, the whores, the reformers, the newsies, the pols and the ward bosses---they're all here. From the 1820's until the turn of the century, the two or three square miles of Five Points was the vilest, filthiest and most degenerate slum in the US's most crowded city. Rents were exorbitant (by 19th c. standards) for these vermin infested rat traps. The Irish, freedmen and European and Asian immigrants that made up the population were among the poorest of the poor. Ironically, when compared to where these denizens hailed from, life in Five Points was a step up. Drinking and crime were rampant. Work, when it was available, was brutal and dismal, up to 60, 70, 80 hours a week for the unskilled. Sort of like working in the city today, minus the lice. Housing was tight and cramped and claustrophobic with as many as 15 adults in a 12' x 14' room. No indoor plumbing, no ventilation or sanitation, the described squalor in this book is, by the end, a dead horse, beaten and beaten over and over again. A little less data and a little more of the human (inhuman) touch would have improved it. I found myself wishing for a Bill the Butcher to jump up on a table and threaten to "festoon my bedchambah wid his guts!". Excellent history, though and very well researched, particularly the section on reformer Jacob Riis.

ok

This is a very complex book of hard history, but also quite enjoyable because of that. It's not storytelling (however, every chapter introduces the topic by telling a story, many of which make the best of the book). This book presents hard evidence and data charts to reconstruct the complexity of society, economics and politics in the controversial Five Points. Depending on your tastes, you will find some chapters much more interesting than others. It certainly happened to me.I totally recomend this book, but only if you enjoy the detailed reconstruction of society. It certainly has some exciting moments, like the description of riots and gang fights, but it's NOT a book about gangs.There's one aspect in which I think it falls short, though: it so overly focuses on the Five Points, to the point of almost leaving the rest of New York out of the picture. Although some references are made to what was happening in the rest of the city, they are so few that it leaves us with a detached picture, almost as if Five Points was a city in of itself, and not a nieghborhood in a vast and complex metropolis.

Well researched and debunks a lot of the myths about the five points, that were mentioned in the gangs of New York book. This book gives a very detailed account about the history of the five points and the people and politics of the neighborhood. If you are looking for a book about the gangs of the five points, then I recommend the gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury. This is a detailed account of the neighborhood itself and does not go to much into the gangs, the only gangs/social clubs mentioned are the Bowery Boys, Roach Guards, Dead Rabbits and maybe a few others, but they are only mentioned every now and then, mainly during the falsely named Dead rabbit and Bowery boys riot. All and all this as a great book if you want to know as much details as possible about the five points. 10/10

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Wanted more information on social history in USA in New york and this gave me much information and insight into the times and the place. I would recommend this book to all who have an interest in this subject, it is a real eye opener.

Blown away by the powerful content of this excellent history of the seamier side of New York