Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York

reread

Once more I've read this amazing book, and I can't recommend it highly enough. It not only was an inspiration for my first novel, The Five Points, but served a research purpose for the sequel, The Five Points Concluded. Anyone with an interest in Manhattan's dark history should pick up Mr. Sante's great book!

Haunted New York

Critics quibble over the fact that Luc Sante's Low Life relies too much and too often on local legends, questionable sources, and sensationalism. The fact is that New York's shadowy history is legendary and sensational but the sources of these local legends are not in question. Gaslight-era New York City was a mostly dark world, filled with unspeakable horrors, at times. Crime, brutality, poverty, disease, and deception were all trademarks of New York's most vicious neighborhoods, from Paradise Square to Satan's Circus to Hell's Kitchen. And Luc Sante casts an unforgiving eye on this world which required no forgiveness. As with Dunlop's book, Gilded City, this book is not meant to be read as a scholarly text, and doesn't pretend to be one. But a reader who is new to the history of New York will learn a lot, and have a tremendous time reading it. This is a terrific book, one that I've gone out and bought for my fellow New Yorkers who complain that the city has gotten 'dangerous' or is 'dirty'. Maybe now they'll shut up.

Simply the best book ever written about 19th Century NY

Sante, has written a book that gives complete and in-depth coverage of what it was really like to live in my town a century ago. For me, the greatest significance of this book was how it utterly destroys the mith of a gentle 19th century New York. I see that as the greatest test of art or liturature - to present something that everybody believes that they are familiar with and to show us just how wrong we were. In other words this books shows us things that most of us have never seen before and describes it in visual and graphic terms. There are numerous parts of this book that could be turned into a movie or other books. I reccomend this book to anyone who loves reading about New York and anyone who thinks that they really know New York.

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