Rating: 
Summary: good but flawed
Review: Although I am an avid NYC history fan, I must admit that I knew next to nothing about the Five Points prior to the release of the movie 'Gangs of New York'. That movie sparked an intrest in me for that area, that has yet to cease...This book takes you into that exact setting, and separates the truths from the myths. The cronological timeline of maps is one of the things I found to be quite interesting as well. I also thought it was quite amazing that the author dedicated entire chapters to some of the more imfamous sites such as The Old Brewery and Paradise Park. Sometimes I wish more of these things were preserved and still viewable today; but I guess the Five Points was an area the city simply wanted to rid itself of...And they did a good job. The five-pointed intersection has been reduced to two 'points', and the site contains no plaques or historical landmark signs whatsoever (Unless you want to count the plaques at nearby Foley Square). Hundreds of people casually stroll through the area every week, without a clue about the historical significance of the ground they walk on...However; if they were to go back in time 150 years, I'm quite sure that wouldn't be the case. The corner of Baxter and Worth will always be a special place for me...One of the few ghostly remains of a bygone era of poverty and corruption in the city, and a silent reminder to anyone who cares, of just how far the city has progressed and evolved since then. This book is definately worth your time.
Rating: 
Summary: As meticulous as it gets..
Review: Although I am an avid NYC history fan, I must admit that I knew next to nothing about the Five Points prior to the release of the movie 'Gangs of New York'. That movie sparked an intrest in me for that area, that has yet to cease...This book takes you into that exact setting, and separates the truths from the myths. The cronological timeline of maps is one of the things I found to be quite interesting as well. I also thought it was quite amazing that the author dedicated entire chapters to some of the more imfamous sites such as The Old Brewery and Paradise Park. Sometimes I wish more of these things were preserved and still viewable today; but I guess the Five Points was an area the city simply wanted to rid itself of...And they did a good job. The five-pointed intersection has been reduced to two 'points', and the site contains no plaques or historical landmark signs whatsoever (Unless you want to count the plaques at nearby Foley Square). Hundreds of people casually stroll through the area every week, without a clue about the historical significance of the ground they walk on...However; if they were to go back in time 150 years, I'm quite sure that wouldn't be the case. The corner of Baxter and Worth will always be a special place for me...One of the few ghostly remains of a bygone era of poverty and corruption in the city, and a silent reminder to anyone who cares, of just how far the city has progressed and evolved since then. This book is definately worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: A Tough But Rewarding Read
Review: First off, I must point out that I work about eight blocks away from the infamous Five Points intersection in New York City. Also, I am very familiar with American history. With these two points mentioned, I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed and learned alot from this book. If you are considering reading "Five Points", it is very important that you assess beforehand what you hope to get out of this book. It has the potential to be either VERY rewarding and informative to you OR, to bore the life out of you and make you want to fling it in the trash! This book is certainly NOT for the casual reader. It is remarkably detailed and meticulous in research chock full of 66 pages of footnotes and a small font, select bibliography of five pages. I had the great advantage of being able to walk over on my lunch hour and follow the included maps around the neighborhood to see where these locations were and, in some cases, see the still standing buildings mentioned in the text. If you are not from New York City or familiar with it's history, this book can be painfully tedious. If this book was a college course, I would estimate it to be either of the 300 or 400 level. Some may take issue with the way the material is arranged. Trying to write about a whole neighborhood with so many layers of diverse history is no easy task. I personally enjoyed the format once I got used to it. Anbinder starts each chapter with a prologue vignette of a few pages describing an event or person who well exemplifies the topic following in the main chapter. I found myself going back at the end of each chapter and re-reading the prologue with the new information just gleaned in mind. The chapters cover the historical making of the Five Points neighborhood, why the neighborhood inhabitants originally (mostly the Irish before the Civil War) came there, how and where the residents lived there, how they worked and what they did, the politics the neighborhood was involved in over the years, the diversions and entertainment found in the neighborhood, types of vice and crime seen there, religion and reform issues (including extensive accounts of the activities of the Five Points Mission and the House of Industry), the infamous riots the neighborhood was a part or cause of (mostly in the 1850s), the neighborhood changes underway during the Civil War and the rise of Tammany Hall, the remaking of Five Points after the Civil War as Italians became more prevalent, the life and activities of the Italian majority in the 1870s and 1880s, the influx of Chinese to the neighborhood and the making of Chinatown, and the activities of Jacob Riis and other reformers towards the eventual demolition of much of Five Points in the 1890s. The author fills in some background information on discussed topics, but it helps greatly to be already familiar with the era's history. Examples would be needing to know the basics of Andrew Jackson and his "Democrats" before fully understanding the causes and issues relating to the rioting so common in Five Points before the Civil War or, familiarity with what Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall was. Some may also quarrel with the need for extensive statistics about the nationality makeup of individual Five Points tenements or the amount of money in residents bank accounts over the years, but extreme details such as those give insights to how New York City has become what it is today. Causes of the rise of the modern fire and police departments, some unions, gangs, and building code details are just some of the contemporary NYC realities that can trace a significant portion of their origins to Five Points. With the previously mentioned warnings in mind, I highly recommend "Five Points" to the ravenous history student. This is no beach read or intro to Five Points. It is thick and heavy like cheesecake, but make sure you know that you love cheesecake before trying this supreme example!
Rating:
Summary: very interesting and enlightening
Review: Five Points, lower Manhattan's most corrupt and dangerous neighborhood during the mid 1800's comes alive in this work. Five Points, located just to the northeast of the WTC site, was described as a place where mostly-Irish immigrants settled and had to fight... literally... for a foothold in this great nation. Tammany Hall, the most powerful Democratic party machine in the nation at the time, is exposed for its heinous crimes and financial corruption. Prostitution and murder, dance halls and taverns, where a nickel good buy you time at the beer hose (guzzle until you purge), its all described in this book. This and The Gangs of New York are worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: Page Turning
Review: Great book on NYC history. Anbinder has done a good job of digging up what may seem to the casual reader as ancillary - or even tediously unnecessary - information. But going through church rolls and Emigrant Savings bank records gives a very personal and human touch to the information. This wasn't just a "slum;" this was a thriving neighborhood, in a packed city, with a multitude of characters, displaying the best and worst of human behavior. A good text for a serious history student. Scorcese fans who want a companion book to his recent movie should get Herb Asbury's instead, which has proven to be part history, part mythology, and more in step with the film. Sure, it was a rough neighborhood, but it can't possibly be any worse than any New York neighborhoods of the 20th century. Anbinder merely gives us the evidence that New York, for all its changes, is a timeless City.
Rating: 
Summary: Well researched
Review: Great book on NYC history. Anbinder has done a good job of digging up what may seem to the casual reader as ancillary - or even tediously unnecessary - information. But going through church rolls and Emigrant Savings bank records gives a very personal and human touch to the information. This wasn't just a "slum;" this was a thriving neighborhood, in a packed city, with a multitude of characters, displaying the best and worst of human behavior. A good text for a serious history student. Scorcese fans who want a companion book to his recent movie should get Herb Asbury's instead, which has proven to be part history, part mythology, and more in step with the film. Sure, it was a rough neighborhood, but it can't possibly be any worse than any New York neighborhoods of the 20th century. Anbinder merely gives us the evidence that New York, for all its changes, is a timeless City.
Rating:
Summary: very interesting and enlightening
Review: I am also a native New Yorker like the first reviewer. And I am also a history buff. This book is not tedious, and does not read like a text book. It's a page turner, it's addictive... and packed with every detail about this era in New York. You will come away with knowledge that such difficult times did exist, and be greatful that you did not have to endure them.
Rating:
Summary: A must read
Review: I am also a native New Yorker like the first reviewer. And I am also a history buff. This book is not tedious, and does not read like a text book. It's a page turner, it's addictive... and packed with every detail about this era in New York. You will come away with knowledge that such difficult times did exist, and be greatful that you did not have to endure them.
Rating:
Summary: Page Turning
Review: I like to read about history which can get boring at times, but not with Five Points. The book read like a movie. It's almost too incredible to think that what I was reading wasn't fiction. I was so intrigued that as soon as I read about the area known as 5 points, I had to get on the subway to see how life has changed. If you like history and love NYC, this is a great book to learn more about how the city is defined.
Rating:
Summary: good but flawed
Review: I live and work just a few blocks from the intersection that was once known as the Five Points. Since I moved to the neighborhood, I've been something of a local history buff. Thus this book wasn't as informative to me as it would probably be to most readers. That does, however give me a perspective from which I can judge its strengths and weaknesses. First off, the books main weakness is the way the author chose to focus very arbitrarily on the area around the Five Points as a single neighborhood, as though the areas to the north, east and west were different neighborhoods. The Five Points was an intersection, not a neighborhood. It's true that 19th Century writers did refer to the area around the Five Points using the phrase "Five Points" as a metonymic reference for the area, but it's quite misleading to claim, is Andinder implicitly does, that the Five Points was a neighborhood distinct from the Lower East Side, for example. Then, as now, the Lower East Side, referred to a quite wide area, and the Five Points region was really just a specific part of the Lower East Side. There are other points too. But aside from that quibble, the focus on just those few blocks gives the book as a whole a somewhat blinkered quality. The books greatest strength was in the research Anbinder did on the Irish immigrants who made up the bulk of the population of that area in the mid 19th century. It was very interesting to learn that such a large proportion of them came from a small number of Estates in the Old Country. That was not something I'd picked up from any other sources. Even there, however, Anbinder left me frustrated. For all the information he unearthed about those people, he left out what for me was one of the most important details: Nowhere does he mention what proportion of the immigrants spoke English when they arrived in New York. Perhaps Anbinder simply assumed these people, being Irish, spoke English. But if so then Anbinder is betraying a woeful ignorance of Irish history. The Famine, which led to the mass emigration, was one of the historical events that most directly led to the near-extinction of the Irish language. Generally it was the Irish speakers in the western part of Ireland who died and emigrated in the greatest numbers. Thus I would imagine that a large number of the Irish-born Five Pointers would have had to learn English from scratch, or nearly from scratch, upon their arrival in the US. The struggle to master a new language is such a basic part of the immigrant experience that it seems to me to be a huge lacuna in Anbinder's discussion that he doesn't even mention it.
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