Description
‘Martin Scorsese’s film version of Herbert Asbury’s The Gangs of New York will resurrect Five Points gangs like the Plug-Uglies and the Dead Rabbits and will make A Clockwork Orange seem like a nice movie about Beethoven.’ –The New York Observer
‘I was intrigued by the title. I started to read it, and I couldn’t stop. I went through it in one day. Since then I’ve been obsessed
with this book … I knew I had to make a film about these people and that period of American life.’ — MARTIN SCORSESE
‘A universal history of infamy, the history of the gangs in New York (revealed by Herbert Asbury) contains all the confusion
and cruelty of the barbarian cosmologies.’ –JORGE LUIS BORGES (from the Foreword)
The Gangs of New York. long out of print and a cult classic. is a tour through a now unrecognisable city of abysmal poverty and habitual violence. Herbert Asbury presents the definitive work on this subject, an illumination of the gangs of old New York that ultimately gave rise to the Mafia and its depiction in films like The Godfather.
‘The Gangs of New York is one of the essential works of the city, as deserving of a permanent place on the shelf as Stephen Crane’s Maggie, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “My Lost City” … and Martin Scorseses Mean Streets. It deserves this privileged placement because it owns a direct pipeline to the city’s
unconscious … The Gangs of New York is the portrait gallery in the ancestral mansions of your bad dreams.’
–LUC SANTE
366 pages
Paperback
In good preloved condition with the exception of soiled areas at the top of the book and just inside the front cover. No loose pages and only a slight colour change to pages. A well read copy with plenty of life left and a fascinating story to tell. Some creasing to front cover. Price reflects condition of book.