An amazing book -- a detailed sociological, historical, political examination of what is today Little Italy and Chinatown in New York. I was drawn to the book after seeing Gangs of New York, of course, but while Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day Lewis are based on real types, the story itself of course was not true. Anbinder digs deeply, through statistical data and contemporary newspaper accounts, into the cultural life of this section of Manhattan. Of course Jacob Riis is frequently referenced. In the last chapter, he briefly chronicles the life of the area past what he calls the end of the "five points" proper and addresses what he feels was the cause of so much misery.

I'm ravenously interested in New York history period, and when I lived in New York, I found the Five Points area (which is now almost entirely Chinatown and civic and municipal buildings) deeply odd--the dark, serpentine streets, the ancient-seeming tenement buildings, the sudden thoroughfares, the random parks. I've been meaning to read Five Points for some time. It's a dense but mostly readable book, with a few quirks. There is a sense of relentlessness about some of it, which I suppose is to be expected in any account of a poverty-stricken area, particularly one that has been poverty-stricken for roughly one hundred and fifty years. But there was a density here that could have been shot through with a little more oxygen. I also found the author's passive-aggressive handling of fellow Five Points chronicler Luc Sante strange. There are two instances where he specifically calls Sante's scholarship out with disdain. And there were also sloppy typos and inconsistencies. For example, in the otherwise extremely well handled section on Jacob Riis, the author indicates that "...on June 5, 1875" Riis wrote a letter to the woman he'd been pining over for more than a decade, who was living overseas, telling her he loved her, wanted her to come to America, etc. Then on the next page, he indicates that Elisabeth responded to his letter a full year earlier than he sent it ("November 1, 1874" has Riis staring dumbly at the reply to that letter, from Elisabeth, which she'd delayed writing for months and months). Little things like that throw me off, perhaps because I'm an editor myself.

But for sheer scope and depth of scholarship, I was truly impressed. I got exactly what I wanted when I looked for a book on Five Points. I hear the voices of the people here, as Anbinder does a great job of weaving those first person accounts into the narrative, and is also good at pointing out the media's complicity through the decades of perpetuating negative stereotypes about the various ethnicities that inhabited Five Points. I would have liked to have seen far more on the African-Americans' day-to-day lives in the Five Points, but I imagine the research material for such an approach is scant to nonexistent.

Reads like a research paper.

I always enjoy reading city history books and this one informing readers about the horrid living conditions in the Five Points region of New York City in the post-Civil War Era was a good reminder of what makes those kind of books riveting. Lots of good sidebar stories, well-documented chronology of life in New York City in the 19th century and solid biographical information on the important figures of the era add up to a good read. Perhaps a little more analysis of why this region was important to the development of New York (or why it wasn't important at all) would have raised it to a 5-star review.

2.5 stars. The book contained a wealth of historical information and interesting anecdotes, but it seemed to lack a consistent narrative or theme.

I did enjoy this book, though it took me a while to finish. It's not exactly a page-turner, but it was very educational. I also listen to The Bowery Boys podcast, so to read this and listen to them, I was able to really situate myself in Five Points.