Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections and Became the Worlds Most Notorious Slum

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Summary: An Intelligent, Well Written Treatment of "Old New York"
Review: Tyler Anbinder's new book on Five Points is an important contribution to the literature on this topic. It is a well written, intelligent treatment by a leading historian on a period and place largely forgotten. While past writers such as Herbert Asbury and Luc Sante created delightfully salacious accounts of the place and its people, Anbinder avoids such extremes in his writing. This is a detailed study, block by block, of Five Points: who lived there, what they did, and how they lived. In doing so he clears up a lot of previously held stereotypes. More importantly, he shows the humanity of the people; eg, if a child in the tenement was suddenly orphaned, the neighbors took him/her in, no questions asked. That's all there was to it. Five Points started off as a WASP/African-American neighborhood, then German/Irish/Jewish, then Italian/Chinese. But it's still a neighborhood of immigrants. If we kept that in mind, that all our ancestors were down there at one time or another, maybe we'd all have a little more understanding and compassion for one another. Great book!