Rating: 
Summary: What a Find ! !
Review: I read this book about a year ago after "finding" it at a warehouse sale.I had not heard of it before;but was taken by the dust jacket and a quick glance.What a surprise,I almost couldn't belive how much I enjoyed it.As I said, I'd not heard of it or for that matter,the author.Here's a case where you can tell a book by it's cover.Then to my surprise we got all the publicity about a movie "The Gangs Of New York".So,off I went to see the movie,and Lo and Behold,it's basically the same story! There is much more detail in the book;but if your fort is bloody violence,movies like "the Untouchables" and "The Godfather"were more like Sunday School picnics.Both the book and the movie are good in their own ways.This book gives a good view of the Irish immigration in NYC up to the time of the civil war.It details in NYC what Kenelly does worldwide in "The Great Shame"
Rating:
Summary: A Revelation!
Review: I thought I knew everything about lower Manhattan, but this book gave me a whole new perspective on the city. Chock full of well-documented accounts as any real history book should be, I found myself recounting the wild stories from its pages to my coworkers. They were equally amazed (and in some cases, appalled), at what went on here in the 19th century. This is a must-read book on New York. Its meticulous details enable us to virtually see, hear and smell the Five Points neighborhood. Unlike the novels set in the same neighborhood and cited by other reviewers, I found the true stories in Five Points far more fascinating than the fiction in the novels. And knowing it was written by an historian freed me from having continually to ask myself, "Did that really happen or is the novelist making it up?" These true stories are better (and crazier) than any fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, Thought-Provoking Accounts
Review: If you have read "Low-Life" by Luc Sante, "Gangs of New York" by Herbert Asbury, or "New York by Gaslight" by George Foster, and enjoyed them even slightly, this book will not disappoint you. I thought the organization of the book into different aspects of life in the Five Points, instead of chronologically, was fine. It didn't confuse and seemed a logical way to organize a socially-focused history book. The author has a gift for writing some very detailed accounts and brings to life all the vibrancy and yes, squalor, held in the Five Points. This book is guaranteed to please if you are lover of NYC history.
Rating: 
Summary: A Difficult-to-Read, Disorganized Book on a Great Subject
Review: In the author's acknowledgements Anbinder describes his difficulty convincing an editor to take on the project. I am not surprised: if the published version is an indication of the organization and structure of the draft, then I cannot understand why any editor would take on the task. Judging by the the final outcome, it appears the editor Anbinder did line up lost his will to live, or at least his will to edit. The book is tergid yet verbose. It repeticiously cites a year or an event as a turning point for the Five Points area and when one (finally) arrives at that year, no detail is given as to what happend, why it happened or the transition to the new state of affairs. The best example of this is the overall pre- and post-Civil War structure the author adopts: there are only a few pages on the war itself as it relates to Five Points. Most of that is filler, relating events the happened largely outside the Five Points district. Poor structure and difficult style asside, the research is excellent. It is a shame the author does not appear to have taken his editor's advice.
Rating:
Summary: A Difficult-to-Read, Disorganized Book on a Great Subject
Review: In the author's acknowledgements Anbinder describes his difficulty convincing an editor to take on the project. I am not surprised: if the published version is an indication of the organization and structure of the draft, then I cannot understand why any editor would take on the task. Judging by the the final outcome, it appears the editor Anbinder did line up lost his will to live, or at least his will to edit. The book is tergid yet verbose. It repeticiously cites a year or an event as a turning point for the Five Points area and when one (finally) arrives at that year, no detail is given as to what happend, why it happened or the transition to the new state of affairs. The best example of this is the overall pre- and post-Civil War structure the author adopts: there are only a few pages on the war itself as it relates to Five Points. Most of that is filler, relating events the happened largely outside the Five Points district. Poor structure and difficult style asside, the research is excellent. It is a shame the author does not appear to have taken his editor's advice.
Rating: 
Summary: The notorious Five Points
Review: New York's Five Points is presented in all of its infamous glory in this fine look at a wild period in Manhattan's history. The research is exemplary, bursting through the misconceptions and tall tales, with a factual account of the events and people of this era. Beginning each section with a narrative, Anbinder piques the reader's interest with a tale of old New York, followed by a straightforward historical account of the topic of the chapter. The Bowery Bhoys, the Dead Rabbits and Tammany Hall's effect on the area are all discussed in detail.
Rather than try to use a pure chronological order, the author focuses on socio-economic issues for the topic of each chapter. By giving a detailed investigation into topics like the daily life, patronage, and entertainment, Anbinder creates a realistic and interesting look at life in the notorious Five Points.
Rating:
Summary: A more faithful account of Five Points
Review: Since I had written a novel with the same title--and since both of our books came out two months apart--I had an enormous interest in Mr. Anbinder's book. I was relieved to discover that Mr. Anbinder feels that while there were several gang conflicts, not everyone was a criminal, and that so many people could rise above it and move on. These were my feelings as well. I only hope that students of the era (especially those who are beginning on the wrong foot with The Gangs of New York) will read Mr. Anbinder's great book to get a more accurate account of that desperate community.
Rating:
Summary: Five points brought to life
Review: The detailed research brings Five points to life, if you want the real story of five points and not just the scorcese/dicaprio version, this is where you will get it
Rating: 
Summary: Pointed Commentary, a Little Blunted
Review: This ambitious social history of a notorious New York neighborhood is valuable for its painstaking research, maps and demographic information.
However, it often bogs down in dull detail, especially compared to the wickedly entertaining "Low Life" by Luc Sante. (The author seems particulary peeved with Sante, taking his work to task on several niggling points. He also takes potshots at Herbert Asbury.)
I felt the book's weakest aspect was its treatment of the New York Draft Riots. The strongest section is the description of the transition of Five Points from a predominantly Irish and Italian slum to present-day Chinatown.
The book is organized in a series of vignettes and capsulized biographies that make it difficult to follow a timeline. Perhaps it would have been better to divide the book into a pre-Civil War section and post-Civil War section.
Buy the book if you are passionate about the history of New York and seek something lighter (!) than "Gotham". If your interest is less scholarly, get a copy of Sante's "Low Life".
Rating:
Summary: A perplexing book - both fascinating and tedious
Review: This book at its best is a great history of urban 19th century New York. At its worst - it is reminiscent of the dull Sociology books I was forced to read in college back in the early 1970's. Five Points has been "romanticized" almost the same as its equivalent London East End neighborhood "Whitechapel" and like Whitechapel, there was enough danger that the place did not need to be over hyperbolized by authors. Sure Asbury's and Sante's books tend to rely too much on contemporary newspaper accounts which tended to over exaggerate the violence and danger of the area. Yet the area of the Five Points (after the Civil War it was if you look at the map "Six Points" due to the extension of Park Street) was the most sordid neighborhood of New York ("the Old Sixth Ward") prior to the Civil War, however after the war it was no worse then the Lower East Side (4th Ward) or Hell's Kitchen.
The author can bore you to tears as he spends page after page telling about the emigration process from County Sligo or the various Savings Accounts the Pointers opened at the Emigrant Savings Bank. Yet there is still a poignancy to the story of the neighborhood which today is Chinatown. Whenever I walk throguh Chinatown (at least twice a month) in Manahattan I look for the site of Mulberry Bend (now Columbus Park) and try to figure out where Bottle Alley, Bandits Roost, etc. stood, and I look for the site of where stood first the infamous tenemant "The Old Brewery" and after it was razed it was rebuilt as "The Five Points Mission" (look for Cardinal Hayes Place near the Federal Courthouse). This is what makes urban history so fascinating - the way we need to over exaggerate the danger of admittedly dangerous neighborhoods. As a previous writer has said it would have been better to more fully cover the Draft Riots and the Astor Palce Riots. By all means read the book if you are interested in urban history but also read "Low Life" and "The Gangs of New York" by Luc Sante and Herbert Asbury respectively. Nevertheless I enjoyed this book despite the excessive statistical detail.
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