All Around the Town: Murder, Scandal, Riot and Mayhem in Old New York (Adrenaline Classics) [Bargain Price] [Paperback]

Herbert Asbury (Author)

Book Description

Series: Adrenaline Classics | Publication Date: October 23, 2003

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), When New York Was Really Wicked 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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 364 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (October 23, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560255218
• ASIN: B002PJ4HK8
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,822,918 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not so much a sequel - its better, January 21, 2006

By 

V. Stevens (Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: All Around the Town: The Sequel to the Gangs of New York (Paperback)

This book was compiled a few years after "Gangs of New York". It's a collection of New Yorker magazine articles on the topic, with different subject matter. Much more sophisticated in structure, accessible, fun in that New Yorker kind of tongue-in-cheek way. A great airplane read, you will read it all before you get to either coast.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Asbury Amazing, December 14, 2009

By 

TH "Tabs" (Alabama) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: All Around the Town: Murder, Scandal, Riot and Mayhem in Old New York (Adrenaline Classics) (Paperback)

This book really is fantastic. It is interesting, a quick read, well written....... If only all history texts were written in this way. It is a deep dark secrets of the city treasure chest.