| Title | : | All Around the Town |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1560255218 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781560255215 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 364 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1934 |
The author of the New York Times best-seller The Gangs of New York returns with a second volume of tales from Gotham's underworld. In this wonderfully colorful and surprising history, Herbert Asbury expands his purview beyond the Five Corners to the entire city of New York. From Lord Cornbury, a loonily corrupt, cross-dressing British governor of colonial days, to the Broadway pickpocket who built herself a mansion in Hoboken, where she set herself up as European royalty, to prohibitionist Carry Nation's first visit to a scornful city of saloons (and her memorable confrontation with the drunken John L. Sullivan), All Around the Town brings to vivid life a memorable range of characters, grifters, murderers, and madmen. Rediscovering a fascinating array of lost corners in the history of the city, Asbury shows that today's tabloid headlines have nothing on the daily goings-on 150 years ago. From "The Sawing-Off of Manhattan Island" to "The Wickedest Man in New York" to "The Flour Riot of 1837," these twenty-three lively and accessible accounts make for top-notch, eccentric popular history as told by a master.
All Around the Town Reviews
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Author Asbury's collection of episodes in early NYC history is fascinating. As he did successfully in "Gangs", Asbury paints the continuum of the New York story as one of sometimes brutal, but always sharp divergence, between privilege and poverty. The often furious violence of the slum vs. the opulence of the monied and powerful few. Absolutely required reading for all native new yorkers...or those aspiring to be one!
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Forgotten past history.
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A fun collection of short articles and vignettes of old New York City. This is getting down into the real lives of those usually lost in more general histories. I'm glad that someone likes to look at what we are walking in our trip through life.
