Rating: 
Summary: Very depressing and disturbing
Review: I have never written a review before, but I felt rather compelled to do so for this particular book. This book was "good" to the extent that it was difficult to put down, particularly when the riot began. However, I was very dismayed by the author's portrayal of humanity as being so cruel, heartless, corrupt, and morally depraved. Were people really that bad at that time in our history? There is also an undercurrent of cruelty to animals throughout this book that I found disturbing. The author makes numerous references to the death of animals, slaughterhouses, etc., which I found difficult to read as an animal lover. Equally upsetting was the violence that people directed towards one another... some of the scenes depicted were quite horrific. I have read many books about the civil war and I have yet to encounter one as violent and heartbreaking as this one. I am not closing my eyes to the reality of violence... I am acutely aware of its existence. However, this book simply left me feeling very depressed about humanity. The characters had little depth to them beyond the violence and one is left with little understanding of what really drove them to this breaking point. In sum, if you are looking for a depressing book, then this is the one for you!!
Rating: 
Summary: Paradise Alley - An excellent look at NYC during the 1860's
Review: I just finished Kevin Baker's "Paradise Alley". It's historical fiction about the New York Draft Riots during the Civil War. He cites as a reference the book "Gangs of New York" upon which the movie of the same name is based. Baker's goal was to portray an accurate account of the events. His goal definitely was not revisionism! The book is 600+ pages long and it tends to drag a little in spots but it is well worth the read. Baker uses the (sometimes maddening) device of each chapter being a viewpoint of one of the principle characters for some event. So when three folks witness a major event, you can bet you're going to read about the event three times. Be advised that the book is quite graphic in its descriptions of war and the riots...not for the faint of heart.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Disappointing
Review: I was extremely disappointed by this novel (especially having paid the publisher's price for the hardcover edition). The plot is hackneyed, totally predictable and goes on and on, the author repeating himself. The characters are one-dimensional and unimaginative. The author needs to learn how to write dialogue. AND...what are all those italics about??? Save your money and your time. Read Gotham instead.
Rating:
Summary: Very depressing and disturbing
Review: I was nervous picking up this book, since I thought the movie "Gangs of New York" was awful. Paradise Alley was exceptional. The text was a nice read, easy to understand, and a real page-turner. The characters are mostly simple folks, except for Robinson, who almost seems to be wishing he was a more simple man. The characters were not perfect, but they were all very believable. Johnny Dolan is a truly evil character. He was a gruesome person who did gruesome things. But he was believable, not in a Freddy or Jason slasher-movie way. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for some knowledge, on a subject which has sliped from most history books, while still being entertained.
Rating: 
Summary: A great read on an obscure subject
Review: I was nervous picking up this book, since I thought the movie "Gangs of New York" was awful. Paradise Alley was exceptional. The text was a nice read, easy to understand, and a real page-turner. The characters are mostly simple folks, except for Robinson, who almost seems to be wishing he was a more simple man. The characters were not perfect, but they were all very believable. Johnny Dolan is a truly evil character. He was a gruesome person who did gruesome things. But he was believable, not in a Freddy or Jason slasher-movie way. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for some knowledge, on a subject which has sliped from most history books, while still being entertained.
Rating:
Summary: Drags on and on and on
Review: If it was not for the length of the book i would give it 4 stars, but not more. The book is overall about 7 characters, 3 of them who originally came to ireland, who live in NYC during the 1863 draft riots. The first 400 pages of the book are about Ruth, an irish girl, who came over to the US with Dolan (a brute she met over in ireland and who saved her life). His entire family died during the potato famine of the 40s and he's going to NYC where his Sister Deirdre lives. She is married to Tom who ends up going to war on her request. All those characters live on the same street, Paradise Alley. Because Dolan beats Ruth constantly, she finds a lover who cares for her, his name is billy dove and is black, which makes the affair all the more secret. On paradise alley also lives Maddy, a prostitute whose favorite customer is Herbert, a reporter for the NY tribune. So these are the main characters, and their lives are told for 400 pages, i'm not going to give any more details because they are boring, just like the first 400 pages are. It drags on and on and has nothing to do with the riot. It is indeed important to know the past of characters to understand why they behave certain ways, but 400 pages was way too much, 50 would have been enough. The author uses each chapter to talk about the lives of each characters. That's not a bad idea, some of the events are told several times through the eyes of different people. However, there is no chronology, the author keeps going back and forth in time constantly for no reason. When there is a chapter that actually gets exciting and suspensefull, the author stops it just as something is about to happen and comes back to it 300+ pages later. That's not a good way to build suspense, it's frustratin more than anything else. If it was not for the last 200 pages, this book would get 1 star. The last 200 pages are wonderfull. They describe the riots in great details, through the eyes of a journalist and also through the eyes of Billy Dove, a black man in the city trying to escape white's people's rage against his race. The details can be very gruesome and disturbing, the author spending several pages describing the torture of an irish soldier among other horrible events. It will make you sick to your stomach. While i was ready to stop reading the book after page 400, i'm glad i kept going. You wont' be able to put the book down until the end after then. Along with the description of the riots, you witness what happens to the main characters as their stories all come together in a terrible fight between neighbors. If you don't mind long readings or just love to read anything about life during the mid 1800's, this book is for you. If not, read a summary of the first 400 pages, and read the last part.
Rating:
Summary: No sophomore slump here.
Review: Kevin Baker, whose "Dreamland" made its strong and haunting appearance several years ago, follows up with another excitingly researched and characterized novel. Set during the five hot days of the New York City draft riots of 1863, "Paradise Alley" traces the lives of three women living on that street waiting for terror and anarchy to reach their doors. Ruth, Dierdre, and Maddy are all Irish, struggling in a hard city that is nonetheless better than what they left. Dierdre and her family are the closest to achieving a form of middle class stability, yet she is the one who brings hell to her own door. Her former sister-in-law Ruth is a ragpicker. Now married to a runaway slave, Ruth came to New York with Dierdre's psychotic brother, whom they hear has been released from prison and is on his way back to town. Maddy, once the mistress of the journalist who tells part of the story, now opens her bedroom to all comers. Baker fills "Paradise Alley" with rich details about the lives of mid-19th century Irish immigrants-their social clubs, their pride in their firefighting teams, the gangs, the church, and the backbreaking work. This is all wonderful stuff, especially his descriptions of the fire teams with their traditions and colorful names. This is a nice big book, packed with compelling characters, intriguing historical detail, and plenty of suspense. Baker orchestrates his novel masterfully, keeping all the themes twisting and twining until the novel reaches its climax. This is one of the best evocations of Civil War-era New York I have read, and it joins Peter Quinn's "Banished Children of Eve" as an outstanding fictionalization of five terrible days in U.S. history.
Rating:
Summary: How much misery can you tolerate?
Review: Life was cheap in New York City in 1863, the setting for this powerfully realized, naturalistic novel. For $ a man who did not want to fight in the Civil War could hire another man to take his place, an option available only to the wealthy, the poor, of necessity, obeying the draft. Living in the city's fetid back alleys, where pigs ran wild, children sailed paper boats in rivers of blood running out of butcheries, and horses and dogs rotted where they fell, the mainly Irish poor finally reached their limits and exploded in murderous rage. During three of the hottest days in July, 1863, they rioted, bludgeoning any man, woman, or child who got in their way, saving their particular wrath for blacks, whom they blamed for the war--innocent neighbors who were stripped, set on fire, and hanged from lamp posts. The "Draft Riots," the people who participated in them, the conditions which spawned them, and the politicians, churchmen, and police who either did not or could not stop them, are fully examined in this huge novel, filled with ugliness and offering little in the way of hope. These days of anarchy, with all their depredations, are recreated through the stories and points of view of seven characters--Ruth Dove, who survived the Irish potato famine (depicted in horrifying background detail) and her husband Billy, a former slave; Dangerous Johnny Dolan, Ruth's abusive and jealous former lover; Johnny's sister, Deirdre Dolan O'Kane, and her husband Tom, who participates in the battles of Fredericksburg and Gettysburg; and newspaper hack, Herbert Willis Robinson, who follows the rioters around the city while worrying about his lover Maddy, a woman who became a prostitute when he refused to give her entree into his world. Baker is a master of odd, and apparently accurate, details from the period, devoting many pages to wide-ranging background material, and developing his characters just enough to make the plot seem plausible, despite its remarkable coincidences, its frequent telegraphing of the action, and an ending which leaves no loose ends. The picture of humanity here is very dark, with details sometimes appearing to be inserted for their shock value. The mob's ghoulish delight in torture and mayhem is sustained for over 600 pages, an experience which makes the reader long for a moment or two of levity. I wish, among all the encyclopedic detail, Baker had offered a few hints about the inner resources which allow one or two characters to rise above the fray and achieve grandeur.
Rating:
Summary: New York City seeths with unrest in the hot summer of 1863
Review: New York, in the middle of the nineteenth century, was the land of refuge for Irish immigrants. Yes, the city was steeped in filth, buildings were shoddily constructed, and corruption was everywhere. But there were jobs to be had, and to Ruth Dove, whose experience of the potato famine in Ireland is described in the most gruesome fashion, it is a place where the sight of feral pigs roving the streets and eating garbage reminds her that food is plentiful. The book opens in the hot summer of 1863. The Civil War is in full swing. And President Lincoln has just called for a draft. It seems that the draft only applies to the Catholic working class immigrants though. That's because a man could buy his way out of the draft for $300, an exorbitant sum for most Irishmen who think that if the Union wins the war, the slaves will be freed and come north to take their jobs. They also hate the class structure that keeps them struggling while the Protestants control the city, and grow rich selling substandard merchandise to the army. The city seethes with unrest. Especially in the area in lower Manhattan known as Paradise Alley where the well-crafted cast of fictional characters have their own problems. There are the women. Ruth Dove is not only worried about her husband, a former slave, and their four mixed race children. She's also heard that Dangerous Johnny Dolan is back in town after 14 years. He's her former lover, a cruel criminal who saved her from starvation in Ireland, and constantly mistreated her, beating her bloody all the time and making her life with him in America a horror. Then there is Deirdre, Johnny Dolan's sister, whose husband is already fighting in the War. And Maddy, a prostitute whose lover is a writer for the New York Tribune. There are the men: Billy Dove, a former slave, who discovered that life as a freed man in New York is little better than slavery. For a short time, he and Ruth were happy in the Negro Seneca Village settlement until it was destroyed to create what is now Central Park. Then there is Tom O'Kane, Deirdre's husband, a former fire fighter. He's been wounded twice on the Civil War battlefields and has seen more than his share of death and destruction. There's Herbert Willis Robinson, the writer, who cares more about writing the story than about the safety of his woman. And then, larger than life is the character of Dangerous Johnny Dolan. Each of these characters narrate chapters and so I got to meet each one of them individually and understand their various points of view. This is a very human story here about love and death and social class and race relations and struggle and revenge. But this is only part of the tale as it is set against the backdrop of real historical events. The characters might be fictional. But the draft riots really did happen. Whole neighborhoods went up in flame. African Americans were tortured and hung. Policemen and soldiers were killed. People fleeing burning buildings were shot. And anyone who infuriated the raging mob was likely to die a horrible death. It was awful. Through the art of his fiction, the New York of 1863 came alive for me. I found it all fascinating reading. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Not a good selection.
Review: Paradise Alley is a book that should not be refered to by Kevin Bakers as a "Hisotrical Novel." First of all, the book is dry and to long. The author does not get up to what the real meaning of the book, the 1863 New York Draft Riots, until page 350 and above. Before the pages to the riot, the author is developing the characters, which is nice to know the people at first hand, but in the end it was to drawn out. Then the riots begin. From this point, it does not get any better. By reading the last 300 or so pages, it was unclear what the author was trying to pass onto the reader. It felt like Baker was not getting down to what the riots was about and the major impact it had on New York City. He did not show the reader that this riots was the worest in the U.S. history. Baker just writes about the riots as if it was a small and insignificant riot. He could have done a better job. I would not recommend this book for a study or even a over view of the 1863 NY draft riot.
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