Five Points by Tyler Anbinder

Five Points by Tyler Anbinder

All but forgotten today, the Five Points neighborhood in Lower Manhattan was once renowned the world over. From Jacob Riis to Abraham Lincoln, Davy Crockett to Charles Dickens, Five Points both horrified and inspired everyone who saw it. While it comprised only a handful of streets, many of America's most impoverished African Americans and Irish, Jewish, German, and Italian immigrants sweated out their existence there. Located in today's Chinatown, Five Points witnessed more riots, scams, prostitution, and drunkenness than any other neighborhood in America. But at the same time it was a font of creative energy, crammed full of cheap theaters, dance halls, and boxing matches. It was also the home of meeting halls for the political clubs and the machine politicians who would come to dominate not just the city but an entire era in American politics.

Drawing from letters, diaries, newspapers, bank records, police reports, and archaeological digs, Anbinder has written the first-ever history of Five Points, the neighborhood that was a microcosm of the American immigrant experience. The story that Anbinder tells is the classic tale of America's immigrant past, as successive waves of new arrivals fought for survival in a land that was as exciting as it was dangerous, as riotous as it was culturally rich.

Anbinder, Tyler: - TYLER ANBINDER is a professor of history and former chair of the History Department at George Washington University. His first book, Nativism and Slavery, won the Avery Craven Prize of the Organization of American Historians. His second book, Five Points, won the New York City Book Prize of 2001. He served as a consultant to Martin Scorsese for Gangs of New York. His ancestors came to New York from southwest Germany, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781439141557
ISBN 10	143914155X
Title	Five Points
Author	Tyler Anbinder
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Year published	2010-09-28
Number of pages	544
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable