Life in mid-19 century New York was tough, and violence and corruption were rife. Nowhere was tougher or more violent than the Bowery and the Five Points area. Two gangs, the Dead Rabbits and the Native Americans, were locked in a seemingly endless battle for supremacy. Amsterdam Vallon, son of the Rabbits' murdered leader, is seeking vengeance for his father's death at the hands of Bill 'The Butcher', head of the Native Americans who are in cahoots with a deeply corrupt Tammany Hall..."Gangs of New York" has long been a cult book. It is now the latest major film from Martin Scorsese.

The Gangs of New York

History

ASBURY, Herbert

Americas

Arrow Books

"An absorbing and at times ironical humorous picture of the battle of Prohibition. Recommended." — Library JournalWith the passing of the Volstead Act, the United States embraced Prohibition as the law of the land. From 1920 to 1933, the well-intentioned ban of the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors gave rise to a flourishing culture of bootleggers, gangsters, and corrupt officials. This witty and perceptive history by Herbert Asbury, the bestselling author of The Gangs of New York, offers a wide-ranging survey of the Prohibition era that covers not only twentieth-century events but also the movement's inception in colonial times and its transformation into a religious crusade.A considerable portion of Americans viewed the end of liquor trafficking as an act of obedience to God's will and anticipated a new era of peace and prosperity. Instead, a vast criminal network of black market profiteers took root, promoting a spirit of lawlessness throughout the country. The Great Illusion charts all aspects of the period's moral decline, from the activities of rumrunners who supplied speakeasies to those of crooked politicians and police who profited from the failed experiment of Prohibition.

The Great Illusion: An Informal History of Prohibition (Dover Literature: Nonfiction)

Dover Publications

A history of American attitudes toward alcoholic beverages, emphasizing the growth of prohibitionist movements through the repeal of the eighteenth amendment

The Great Illusion: An Informal History of Prohibition

Praeger

This classic history of crime tells how Chicago's underworld earned and kept its reputation.

Gem of the Prairie: An Informal History of the Chicago Underworld

Northern Illinois Univ Pr

From Midwestern Riverboats to East Coast Racetracks, Herbert Asbury explores the legal and illegal history of gambling in pre-WWII America. Describing notorious gambling havens like Chicago and New Orleans, as well as lesser-known outposts in cities like Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Cincinnati, Ohio, Asbury examines the gambling houses, big and small, which peppered the American landscape. Also represented are the lives of some of America's most famous gamblers, including Mike McDonald, John Morrissey, and Richard Canfield, as well as their infamous counterparts like "Canada Bill" and "Charley Black Eyes," men who made their names as grifters and con men. Asbury also explores the games these men played, describing the rules and origins of dozens of dice and card games. From $1 lottery tickets to thousand dollar poker antes, America's love of gambling thrives today, but it was during Asbury's era that gambling was established as an American passion.

Sucker's Progress

Humor & Entertainment

Puzzles & Games

Patterson Smith

The history of the Barbary Coast properly begins with the gold rush to California in 1849. If the precious yellow metal hadn't been discovered ... the development of San Francisco's underworld in all likelihood would have been indistinguishable from that of any other large American city. Instead, owing almost entirely to the influx of gold-seekers and the horde of gamblers, thieves, harlots, politicians, and other felonious parasites who battened upon them, there arose a unique criminal district that for almost seventy years was the scene of more viciousness and depravity, but which at the same time possessed more glamour, than any other area of vice and iniquity on the American continent. The Barbary Coast is Herbert Asbury's classic chronicle of the birth of San Francisco—a violent explosion from which the infant city emerged full-grown and raging wild. From all over the world practitioners of every vice stampeded for the blood and money of the gold fields. Gambling dens ran all day including Sundays. From noon to noon houses of prostitution offered girls of every age and race. (In the 1850s, San Francisco was home to only one woman for every thirty men. It was not until 1910 that the sexes achieved anything close to parity in their populations.) This is the story of the banditry, opium bouts, tong wars, and corruption, from the eureka at Sutter's Mill until the last bagnio closed its doors seventy years later.

The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld

Hippocrene Books

First published in 1928, Herbert Asbury's whirlwind tour through the low-life ofnineteenth-century New York has become an indispensible classic of urban history. Focusing on the saloon halls, gambling dens, and winding alleys of the Bowery and the notorious Five Points district, The Gangs of New York dramatically evokes the destitution and shocking violence of a turbulent era, when colorfully named criminals like Dandy John Dolan, Bill the Butcher, and Hell-Cat Maggie lurked in the shadows, and infamous gangs like the Plug Uglies, the Dead Rabbits, and the Bowery Boys ruled the streets. A rogues gallery of prostitutes, pimps, poisoners, pickpockets, murderers, and thieves, The Gangs of New York is a dramatic and entertaining glimpse at a city's dark past.

The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the New York Underworld

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Home to the notorious "Blue Book," which listed the names and addresses of every prostitute living in the city, New Orleans's infamous red-light district gained a reputation as one of the most raucous in the world. But the New Orleans underworld consisted of much more than the local bordellos. It was also well known as the early gambling capital of the United States, and sported one of the most violent records of street crime in the country. In The French Quarter, Herbert Asbury, author of The Gangs of New York, chronicles this rather immense underbelly of "The Big Easy." From the murderous exploits of Mary Jane "Bricktop" Jackson and Bridget Fury, two prostitutes who became famous after murdering a number of their associates, to the faux-revolutionary "filibusters" who, backed by hundreds of thousands of dollars of public support—though without official governmental approval—undertook military missions to take over the bordering Spanish regions in Texas, the French Quarter had it all. Once again, Asbury takes the reader on an intriguing, photograph-filled journey through a unique version of the American underworld.

French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld

The French Quarter

Mockingbird Books

French Quarter

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Books by ASBURY, Herbert