Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York [Anglais] [Broché]

There are very few classics in the field of pop culture--the academic stuff tends to be too dry and the fun stuff is too quickly dated. This book by Luc Sante is the exception--in fluid prose liberally sprinkled with astute metaphors, Sante tells the story of New York's Lower East Side, circa 1840-1920. The personal histories of criminals, prostitutes, losers, and swindlers bring to life the social and statistical history that the author has meticulously researched. Not limiting himself to the usual sources, Sante finds his history in old copies of Police Gazette as well as actual police, fire, and social service records. Above all, what really makes this book work is the writing, which brings to life a culture of the streets that continues to form a silent influence on our contemporary popular culture.

Sante exposes the underside of Manhattan's underclass circa 1840-1919, presenting New York then as already a realm of danger and pleasure.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The history of New York City (Manhattan Island) is rich and varied--a veritable gold mine for writers interested in exploring some of its darker passages. Sante, Lower East Side resident, became curious about the area's 19th-century tenement buildings and how their early inhabitants lived, traveled, and were entertained. The four sections of this fascinating and thought-provoking book cover the period 1840-1919, and are entitled "The Landscape" (streets and buildings); "Sporting Life" (theater, saloons, gambling, drugs, prostitution); "The Arm" (street gangs, police, and politics); and "Invisible City" (orphans, drifters, and "Bohemians"). New York's dark side is rooted in its past. Areas such as the Bowery owe their unsavory reputations to their colonial beginnings, and the often tawdry "pop culture" of today began with Manhattan's 19th-century underclass. This book is as lively and vivid as its subject matter. Highly recommended.
- Howard E. Miller, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Missouri Lib., St. Louis
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

A guided tour through Manhattan's demimonde of the last century, conducted with exquisite relish by East Village journalist Sante (Esquire, The Village Voice, etc.), who speaks with all the authority of an eyewitness. Between the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 and the passage of the Volstead Act in 1919, N.Y.C. grew from a minor port to an international metropolis. The cost of this development was immense: Real-estate speculation transformed whole tracts of open farmland into city blocks overnight; inadequate sewage and sanitation systems bred perennial epidemics; municipal government passed from the hands of patrician amateurs to those of ruthless demagogues; and the number of poor swelled far beyond the ability of the city to absorb and provide for them. Sante paints a portrait of extraordinary corruption and vitality, which entices almost to the degree it horrifies. ``This book can be seen as an attempt at a mythology of New York,'' he claims at the start, but it is a mythology of antiheroes in which no one comes off terribly well. We are presented, in four sections, with a look at the changing topography of the city (``Landscape''), the development of the various entertainments--in decreasing order of wholesomeness and legality--for which the city was famed (``Sporting Life''), the political and criminal forces that struggled to gain ascendancy during this period (``The Arm''), and--most hauntingly--the drifters, orphans, bohemians, and assorted lumpen masses who made up the ranks of the forgotten and despised (``The Invisible City''). The vignettes are priceless: the brothel managed by an ex- seminarian, complete with Bibles in every room and daily prayers at noon and midnight; the ``Doctor's Riot'' of 1788 (set off by rumors of grave-robbing in the medical schools), which ended in the massacre or forcible eviction of every physician in town. A rich delight. And for hapless New Yorkers who find themselves worn down by the present-day chaos of their city, Sante provides a strangely heartening reminder that nothing much has changed. (Nicely illustrated with rare photographs of the period- -some seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

"A cacophonous poem of democracy and greed, like the streets of New York themselves." --John Vernon, Los Angeles Times Book Review
--Ce texte fait référence à lédition Broché .

Luc Sante's Low Life is a portrait of America's greatest city, the riotous and anarchic breeding ground of modernity. This is not the familiar saga of mansions, avenues, and robber barons, but the messy, turbulent, often murderous story of the city's slums; the teeming streets--scene of innumerable cons and crimes whose cramped and overcrowded housing is still a prominent feature of the cityscape.

Low Life voyages through Manhattan from four different directions. Part One examines the actual topography of Manhattan from 1840 to 1919; Part Two, the era's opportunities for vice and entertainment--theaters and saloons, opium and cocaine dens, gambling and prostitution; Part Three investigates the forces of law and order which did and didn't work to contain the illegalities; Part Four counterposes the city's tides of revolt and idealism against the city as it actually was.

Low Life provides an arresting and entertaining view of what New York was actually like in its salad days. But it's more than simpy a book about New York. It's one of the most provocative books about urban life ever written--an evocation of the mythology of the quintessential modern metropplois, which has much to say not only about New York's past but about the present and future of all cities.
--Ce texte fait référence à lédition Broché .

From opium dens to the Bowery's suicide saloons, this lively, learned work of outlaw urban history ushers readers through the dark heart of New York City in the years between 1840 and 1919. "A systematic, well-researched historical account of . . . corruption, vice, and miscellaneous mayhem . . . well-crafted and tightly written. Boston Globe. 63 photographs.

Luc Sante was born in Verviers, Belgium, and now lives in New York City. He is the author of Evidence, The Factory of Facts, and Walker Evans, and his work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and Harper's, among other publications. He teaches writing and the history of photography at Bard College.
--Ce texte fait référence à lédition Broché .