The Gangs Of San Francisco

The fourth book in the bestselling Gangs of... series, by the author of The Gangs of New York, this time chronicling the criminal underbelly of early 20th-century San Francisco

Herbert Asbury was born into a strictly Methodist family in Missouri in 1889.  His pious background and his subsequent rejection of Methodism greatly influenced both his philosophy of life and his career as reporter and author.  Indeed, many of his books deal with the darker, seamier side of American life.  He died in 1963 of chronic lung problems, the legacy of a gas-attack in France during the first World War.

Herbert Asbury, author of The Gangs of New York and The Gangs of Chicago, turns his attention to chronicle the seedy underworld of San Francisco, from its gold-rush glories to its subterranean opium dens. Houses of ill repute play host to shanghaied sailors, and the Chinese tong wars rage around the city. San Francisco's historic past is here brought to life in all its scintillating and infamous glory.

An Informal History of the French Quarter Underworld

The Gangs Of New Orleans

The gripping story of the criminal underworld of early 20th-century New Orleans, by the author of the bestselling The Gangs of New York

Home to the notorious 'Blue Book', which listed the names and addresses of every prostitute living in the city, New Orleans's infamous red-light district gained a reputation as one of the most raucous in the world. But the New Orleans underworld consisted of much more than the local bordellos. It was also well known as the early gambling capital of the United States, and sported one of the most violent records of street crime in the country. In The Gangs of New Orleans, Herbert Asbury, author of The Gangs of New York, chronicles the immense underbelly of 'The Big Easy'. From the murderous exploits of Mary Jane 'Bricktop' Jackson and Bridget Fury, two prostitutes who became famous after murdering a number of their associates, to the faux-revolutionary 'filibusters' who, backed by hundreds of thousands of dollars of public support - though without official governmental approval - undertook military missions to take over the bordering Spanish regions in Texas, the French Quarter had it all. Once again, Asbury takes the reader on an intriguing journey through a unique history of the American underworld.

The Gangs Of New York

Asbury's violent, visceral novel was adapted by Martin Scorsese into the biggest film of 2002. Nominated for ten Oscars, winner of two BAFTAs and one Golden Globe, Gangs of New York<i> </i>had a hit cast: Leonardo Di Caprio, Cameron Diaz, Daniel Day Lewis and Liam Neeson.

Asbury was a realist and mid-Western moralist whose book is, as Gopnik notes, 'a kind of surrealist collage of the city's secret history'

Like one of the thugs he writes about, he really is an "extraordinary virtuoso in the art of mayhem"

Herbert Asbury was born into a strictly Methodist family in Missouri in 1889.  His pious background and his subsequent rejection of Methodism greatly influenced both his philosophy of life and his career as reporter and author.  Indeed, many of his books deal with the darker, seamier side of American life. He is best know for his true crime books set in the 19th and early 20th century America. He died in 1963 of chronic lung problems, the legacy of a gas-attack in France during the first World War.

<i>The Gangs of New York</i> is a tour through a now unrecognisable city of abysmal poverty and habitual violence centred around the infamous slum of Five Points, with its rival Irish and American gangs. Cobbled from legend, memory, police records, the self-aggrandizements of aging crooks, popular journalism, and solid historical research, this is a powerful account of New York City's tumultuos past. Asbury presents the definitive work on this subject, an illumination of the gangs of old New York that ultimately gave rise to the modern Mafia and its depiction in cult films like The Godfather.

Herbert Asbury

This classic history of crime tells how the Chicago underworld earned - and kept - its notorious reputation, from the time it was settled to the Prohibition days of the 1920s. Recounting the lives of such infamous early inhabitants as the original Mickey Finn and the mass murderer H. H. Holmes, it climaxes with the city's golden age of crime and a dramatic account of the careers of the biggest of the Big Shots - Big Jim Colosimo, Terrible Johnny Torrio, and the elusive Al Capone, revealing life as it was lived in the criminal districts and the infamous red light district where the brothels boasted opulence unheard of before or since. Rounded off with fascinating photographs and illustrations, this is one of the most detailed, reliable and readable accounts of the nether side of Chicago's first century.

Herbert Asbury

Books by Herbert Asbury

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