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30 reviews for:
Low Life: Drinking, Drugging, Whoring, Murder, Corruption, Vice and Miscellaneous Mayhem in Old New York
Lucy Sante
4.12 AVERAGE
30 reviews for:
Low Life: Drinking, Drugging, Whoring, Murder, Corruption, Vice and Miscellaneous Mayhem in Old New York
Lucy Sante
4.12 AVERAGE
greenanole's review against another edition
4.0
While the meat of this book is fascinating, Sante's preface, introductions to each section and afterword are some of the best pieces of romantic writing about NYC I've come across.
jonfaith's review against another edition
3.0
Night is forgotten and endlessly repeated; it is glorious and it sits next door to death.
After a scintillating introduction Low Life slipped into the mundane, a survey of 19C journalism rather than an exploration itself of Manhattan's less becoming aspects--which ultimately was a list of ethnically robust names. Such a list was then attached to some sociological blight. Indeed this was two-star experience until the splendid section on bohemian life. That should have been the focus of this work, not an insouciant inventory of vice and corruption.
This work is supposed to be a compendium of ghosts, the spectral legacy of a metropolis built overnight, being a Golden Door which charged double to those weary masses. My reading alternated between boredom and anger, given the poetic possibilities of the subject, a subject one Lewis Allan Reed called a circus and a sewer. Sante missed that chance.
After a scintillating introduction Low Life slipped into the mundane, a survey of 19C journalism rather than an exploration itself of Manhattan's less becoming aspects--which ultimately was a list of ethnically robust names. Such a list was then attached to some sociological blight. Indeed this was two-star experience until the splendid section on bohemian life. That should have been the focus of this work, not an insouciant inventory of vice and corruption.
This work is supposed to be a compendium of ghosts, the spectral legacy of a metropolis built overnight, being a Golden Door which charged double to those weary masses. My reading alternated between boredom and anger, given the poetic possibilities of the subject, a subject one Lewis Allan Reed called a circus and a sewer. Sante missed that chance.
mslauraeb's review against another edition
3.0
I don't like non fiction. It's just usually so poorly written I get bored and just tune out. However, this was really interesting stuff. I kept blabbing on and on to people about how much I was enjoying it and "did you know that Gangs of New York is not complete crap? it was actually like that!" and "did you know that there used to be new york gangs of pirates?!" and things along those lines.
danywever's review against another edition
5.0
The kind of book that makes you spend more time researching and going down rabbit holes than actually reading it.
alissawilkinson's review against another edition
3.0
Quite good. It moves very quickly and contains a completely astonishing amount of information that will change your view of NYC forever. In places it's just too much.
ellestad's review against another edition
4.0
Sections of this book should be required reading for anyone interested in the bar and saloon history in the US.
leswat's review against another edition
5.0
FASCINATING true history of the lurid and legendary Five Points neighborhood as seen in "Gangs of New York" == Scosese's movie based on a real book written in the 20's by that name.
cookiereadsswiftly's review against another edition
5.0
Loved this book, makes me hungry for more about this era (1890-1920 New York). Makes me want to go walk these streets.