Book Description
Celebrated urban theorist lifts the lid on the effects of a global explosion of disenfranchised slum-dwellers.
According to the United Nations, more than one billion people now live in the slums of the cities of the South. In this brilliant and ambitious book, Mike Davis explores the future of a radically unequal and explosively unstable urban world.
From the sprawling barricadas of Lima to the garbage hills of Manila, urbanization has been disconnected from industrialization, even economic growth. Davis portrays a vast humanity warehoused in shantytowns and exiled from the formal world economy. He argues that the rise of this informal urban proletariat is a wholly original development unforeseen by either classical Marxism or neoliberal theory.
Are the great slums, as a terrified Victorian middle class once imagined, volcanoes waiting to erupt? Davis provides the first global overview of the diverse religious, ethnic, and political movements competing for the souls of the new urban poor. He surveys Hindu fundamentalism in Bombay, the Islamist resistance in Casablanca and Cairo, street gangs in Cape Town and San Salvador, Pentecostalism in Kinshasa and Rio de Janeiro, and revolutionary populism in Caracas and La Paz.Planet of Slums ends with a provocative meditation on the "war on terrorism" as an incipient world war between the American empire and the slum poor.
Customer Reviews:
Depressing but true.......2007-06-26
If one just looked at the figures over the last twenty or so years there has been a lot of economic growth in Asia and Latin America. Africa is still troubled with a lot of the sub Sahara countries having negative growth. On balance though one would expect the lot of people in poor countries to be improving. Not so according to this book. What has been happening is incredible increases in urbanisation. However this urbanisation is in the form of slums.
Slums in poorer countries are portrayed as hell holes. People live in grossly overcrowded housing with no access to fresh water. In the slum cities of the third world there is no provision for removal of sewerage so that it runs into the fresh water supply (Sao Paulo) or simply is deposited on the ground. The failure to treat sewerage results in large numbers of deaths mainly to children through dysentery and cholera.
The vast majority of those who live in the slums have the most marginal of jobs. Sitting beside a road selling a few vegetables, cleaning shoes a few times a day. Driving taxis for a few dollars a day. (Apparently one in 7 cars in Lima is a taxi.) One of the tragedies of the slums is that the desperation of families leads to children below 14 being the bread winners of families. Working in Indian textile or carpet factories for minuscule wages for 12 hours a day, losing their childhood and any access to education.
The book is a sustained attack on the Peruvian economist De Soto who posited a theory that the way to overcome the problem of slums is to give title to the slum dwellers of the land they squat on and to make available small loans for "business enterprises". What the book suggests is that in the last twenty or so years since the development of free market ideologies have led to the enforced retreat of the state in poorer countries from economic life there has only been disaster. Potentially the state could do something about water provision, housing or sewerage removal but the poorer countries are at the mercy of international institutions which prevent such anti market activity by tying conditions to loans. The life of slum dwellers is so marginalised that title to slum land will achieve nothing.
The book rather resembles Engels' book on the condition of the English working class in 1844. It is full of rather depressing facts and figures with anecdotes to bring home the nature of the misery and the total degradation of life that exists in the slums. Not a pleasant read but something which is a sober reminder that growth rates alone do not translate automatically into the reduction of poverty or human misery.
A Devastating Deconstruction of Neo-Liberal Economics.......2007-05-29
Mike Davis' main contribution to the scholarship of urban poverty in the Third World is his point-by-point deconstruction of the failure of neo-liberal economic policies, and that when mixed with corruption, racism, and incompetence, make these massive slums the serious and festering sores that they are.
Planet of Slums is a scholarly work replete with charts, tables and footnotes, but is nevertheless very easy to read. Which probably accounts for Davis' popularity as an author. It does not have the boring ponderous qualities found in most academic writing.
I recommend it.
A Wake Up Call that will be Ignored.......2007-05-28
Davis has put together a thorough and damning indictment of the indifference of the human race to the plight of those who are victims of its very mixed economic success. By using mostly official and well credentialed sources, he builds up a picture of the third of humanity that must eke out its existence under conditions that those who are reading this review are unlikely to be able to even imagine. This situation, though Davis does not point the finger that sharply, is the result of both the success of modern medicine in reducing mortality (and hence increasing successful fertility) and an economic system that favors those who have already succeeded - those with education and contacts, however limited, against those without, many of whom have been kept there by the very governments purporting to be in the business of helping them. It is a terrible and tragic story, one likely to have consequences far more difficult to manage than even the daily miseries of the new urban migrants to the great slums of the third world cities. I can only hope that the world will wake up and begin to do something serious about the abuse of people that goes on daily in our midst, but after a lifetime of close personal contact with the situation in India, I am afraid that the very human tendency to look away will prevail, to our ultimate cost.
A warning about the world's future.......2007-04-23
I guess most people never were able to read the 2004 report of the UN's Commission on Human Settlements. Slums around the world are growing ... not declining. Davis's book builds on research showing what a global horror story the current world order is creating. The book suffers from rather dull prose and could have been better organized. However, there's a chance this book might wake people up about what's really happening in the world.
The crisis of global capitalism.......2007-03-28
Mike Davis is always someone to seize an opportunity to decry the horrible situation somewhere, but in this case, it is an exposé that cannot be made often enough. "Planet of Slums" is a catalogue of the institutional failures, the despicable destruction, the filth and pollution, the poverty, misery and want, the disease and cynicism, in short the Verelendung of the worldwide poor that is the inevitable and eternal result of the capitalist mode of production. Within three decades, a stunning two billion people will live in the slums of megacities in the Third World, where all public services are absent, there are no toilets or drinking water, and where even the poor exploit the poor.
Mike Davis, as usual, pulls no punches and takes no prisoners in his description of the effects of the Washington Consensus on these undeveloped nations. Refuting the ideological mythologies of self-help such as De Sotoism and microlending, he demonstrates that the situation in the Third World is bleak and will get bleaker still. The longer the current order of neoliberalism and Structural Adjustment Programmes, led by such philanthropical heros as World Bank director Paul Wolfowitz, goes on, the more the absolute poverty, immiseration and loss of dignity of the world's poor will continue, and the greater inequality will become. Already one-third of the world's workforce is unemployed or underemployed, and worldwide average income has decreased the past decades. The megacities of the global south will become centers of hyper-alienation, and the inevitable result can only be the destruction of the current order, or the destruction of the world. The world's five billion poor are at our door - hear them knock!
Average customer rating:
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- SureShot
- good pictures, not the same as going there
- Incredible sana
- Shootback: candid, challenging and inspiring
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Shootback
Lana Wong
Manufacturer: Booth-Clibborn
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The Journey Is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon
ASIN: 1861541325 |
Book Description
Shootback puts basic point-and-shoot cameras into the hands of 32 teenage boys and girls from Mathare, Nairobi, one of Africa's largest slums. This book documents the extraordinary results: provocative, compelling images and hand-written words which reveal unexpected sides of these teenager's lives. The photographs speak eloquently of friends, family life, football fever and the harsh realities of everyday life in the slums with hope, an infectious humor and a disarming sense of honesty which shakes us into new perspectives on the developing world. Edited by documentary photographer Lana Wong and published with the support of the Ford Foundation, this visceral photographic collage challenges traditional tourist images of Africa and uses photography as a truly democratic art.
Customer Reviews:
SureShot.......2003-04-11
Lana Wong has done a great job of putting together a remarkable collection of some of the best adolescent photography the world has seen. Not only are the photos an accurate portrayal of the desperate lives thesechildren and thier families lead, but they are full of expression. The MYSA Shootback project has helped these children find talemts they never expected they had, or never had the opportuniy to nurture. Lana Wong has done a beautiful thing for so many people, if you are interested in africa and photography, this book is a must.
SureShot.......2003-04-11
Lana Wong has done a great job of putting together a remarkable collection of some of the best adolescent photography the world has seen. Not only are the photos an accurate portrayal of the desperate lives thesechildren and thier families lead, but they are full of expression. The MYSA Shootback project has helped these children find talemts they never expected they had, or never had the opportuniy to nurture. Lana Wong has done a beautiful thing for so many people, if you are interested in africa and photography, this book is a must.
good pictures, not the same as going there.......2000-07-07
This book is a great collection of pictures from Mathare, but it is no replacement for going there. I just returned from spending the last five weeks in Mathare and neighboring Eastleigh, where some of the worst poverty in the world exists. The book portrays graphic images and does a wonderful job of trying to capture the stark reality of the plight of these kids.
As someone who has sat with the street children in their bases, the book does as good of a job as you can get with pictures alone, but it is simply no substitute for being there.
Incredible sana.......2000-05-29
Shootback is an awesome book. I spent the last 5 months in Kenya going to school and it is the only way that one can truely understand the horrors of the slums of a third world country. These kids who live there are being given an oppertunity that they never would have gotten otherwise. They get the chance to share with the world and reach people who might be able to make a difference for them. This is no ordinary touristy book about the incredible country of Kenya, this shows the way that many of it's people live. Shootback shares the inside of the slums like nothing else. A normal tourist couldn't go there, let alone bring a camera there. I want to say thanks to the author and creator of the Shootback ministry. You help people see the real side of Kenya.
Shootback: candid, challenging and inspiring.......2000-03-23
Having myself written academically on Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA), the organization out of which this initiative originated, I am thrilled that Shootback: Photos by Kids from the Nairobi Slums has appeared on the North American website of amazon.com. This is an absorbing and thought-provoking book that challenges the way we (North Americans) view the world. A lot of hard work has gone into this labor of love by Lana Wong and her brave band of photographers, and it shows.
MYSA, by anyone's standards, is a remarkable organization, and this is a remarkable book. Seldom is the dictum: "A picture is worth a thousand words" more appropriate. Shootback provides a candid window into hard places and hard times, but never loses hope, because it is framed through the eyes and described in the words of young people. The book is far more than the sum total of its photographs. Rarely do slum dwellers -- even less the children of the slum -- get to tell us the story of their lives and communities. Shootback therefore provides an insider's view of a slum community with all its energy and resilience. I heartily recommend a wonderful book. Prepare to be both troubled and inspired!
Customer Reviews:
Eager to read more.........2006-03-06
I particularly liked the mix of personal encounter, eye-witness description and factual research. We're reading this book in our JustFaith program;it offered rich ground for discussion without handing us conclusions.The local speaker we invited on the topic of international poverty was from Mexico City. He was wondering if this book is available in Spanish. (Anyone know?)
Book Description
First published in 1890, and undoubtedly Azevedo's masterpiece, The Slum is one of the most widely read and critically acclaimed novels ever written about Brazil. Indeed, its great popularity, realistic descriptions, archetypal situations, detailed local coloring, and overall race-consciousness may well evoke Huckleberry Finn as the novel's North American equivalent. Yet Azevedo also exhibits the naturalism of Zola and the ironic distance of Balzac; while tragic, beautiful, and imaginative as a work of fiction, The Slum is universally regarded as one of the best, or truest, portraits of Brazilian society ever rendered. This is a vivid and complex tale of passion and greed, a story with many different strands touching on the different economic tiers of society. Mainly, however, The Slum thrives on two intersecting story lines. In one narrative, a penny-pinching immigrant landlord strives to become a rich investor and then discards his black lover for a wealthy white woman. In the other, we witness the innocent yet dangerous love affair between a strong, pragmatic, "gentle giant" sort of immigrant and a vivacious mulatto woman who both live in a tenement owned by said landlord. The two immigrant heroes are originally Portuguese, and thus personify two alternate outsider responses to Brazil. As translator David H. Rosenthal points out in his useful Introduction: one is the capitalist drawn to new markets, quick prestige, and untapped resources; the other, the prudent European drawn moth-like to "the light and sexual heat of the tropics." A deftly told, deeply moving, and hardscrabble novel that features several stirring passages about life in the streets, the melting-pot realities of the modern city, and the oft-unstable mind of the crowd, The Slum will captivate anyone who might appreciate a more poetic, less political take on the nineteenth-century naturalism of Crane or Dreiser.
Customer Reviews:
One of the best so far.......2003-07-25
By chance did I pick up this book and by chance did I discover one of the best literary writings. This book is addictive; it gives you the real view of Brazil at the end of the last century; it makes you find out what Aluisio Azevedo sees.
I am amazed at the few people that have even heard about it, let alone read. It should be a required reading in any International Studies class.
A Masterpiece.......2002-08-30
This book is a masterpiece for several reasons. It is filled with complex and interesting characters, none especially likable but all interesting. Some of the passages, including the scene where Jeronimo stands, hypnotized, watching Rita Baiana dance for the first time, rank among the best prose I have ever read (I hope the translator does it justice). Structurally it is unusual because no individual person is the main character. The main character is the Slum itself, which is treated as an organic unit. This fact brings me to my next point- Azevedo's idea of treating a neighborhood as an organic entity predates Chicago School Sociologists like Wirth and Zorbaugh by 40 years. People interested in Urban Studies will be fascinated by Azevedo's description of the birth of the slum and it's growth to the point where, towards the end of the story, it begins to fill up with students and artists and starts to gentrify. It also serves as a valuable historical document, showing what day to day life was like for poor Brazilians and immigrants in Rio de Janeiro during the twilight of the Empire. Apparently, one of the main differences between then and now in Brazil is that in those days, slums actually had owners. Today, most Brazilian slums are formed by squatters and this (judging from this book) seems to be an improvement. All This is not to say that the book doesn't have its flaws. One thing that I find troublesome with a lot of naturalism, including the Slum, is that it focuses almost entirely on sadness and tragedy while giving the appearance of objective storytelling. In any event, evil characters are often more interesting than good ones and the slumlord Joao Romao is one of the great literary hypocrites of all times.
Colorful Descriptions, Weak Naturalist Plotting.......2002-02-15
Azevedo's 1890 book depicting life and death in a Rio de Janeiro slum is one of Brazil's early masterpieces. It follows the fortunes of Joao Romao as he expands his business interests from small-time shopowner to upwardly striving slumlord. Dozens of neighborhood denizens wander in and out of the story, fighting, singing, working, copulating, and dying. The characters, dialogue, and scenery are vivid -- the slum comes alive as blacks and mulattos scramble with Portuguese and Italian immigrants to climb off the bottom of the social food chain. Women's roles are fascinating: virgin/prostitute, submissive head of family, object and subject. Race relations are critically examined. For modern readers seeking a developed plot line, the story might seem to slip off the rails. Identified with the Realist/Naturalist literary schools, Azevedo's slum seeks to broadly describe and illuminate a social setting rather than the stories of particular characters. Even so, the imagery is colorful and the language powerful. Brazil's slums don't seem to have changed much in the century since Azevedo wrote about them.
A Lucky Find.......2001-04-27
I read about this book in one of the many book review publications I read. The reviewer correctly called it a masterpeice. Apparently only one other person read that review or perhaps she found it on her own. We were both lucky. It is a book so well worth reading that it is hard to find enough suitable words of praise yet it is unknown. This book throbs with the colors, odors and sounds of a Brazilian slum: the excitement, the perfumes, the sexuality and the despair. It is deceptively easy to read. In fact, it almost finishes too quickly. One wants to continue to bathe one' senses in the luxurious words. This is not to say that the reader's morality and intellect is not also engaged. It is a scathing commentary on Brazilian attitudes towards race and the poor during the early 20th century. The reader cannot help but recognize that thhese attitudes are still with us in the early 21st century. However, Azevedo does not preach to us. He simply presents us with the issues, quietly, even deceptively. We do not know how deeply we have thought and felt until the last page.
Read The Young Favela.......2001-01-16
You can't help falling for all of the lusterous characters in this engrossing Brazilian classic. The novel is as addictive and effortless to read as watching a soap opera, yet educates us on Brazil's rich social history. I feel fortunate to be able to read it in this wonderfully smoothe and acurate English translation.
Book Description
"This is a book about Chicago. It is also, and for that very reason, a book about every other American city which has lived long enough and grown large enough to experience the transformation of neighborhoods and the contact of cultures and the tension between different types of individual and community behavior. . . . Here is a type of sociological investigation which is equally marked by human interest and scientific method."—Christian Century
Customer Reviews:
A Classic Study.......2000-07-16
The Gold Coast and the Slum is one of the classic studies of the Chicago School of urban sociology. In that sense, it has been largely superceded by more sophisticated analyses in the intervening decades, yet in terms of readability and flair it is very difficult to think of a better introduction to the world of urban studies. Today, in fact, it reads more like a work of literature than a sociological study--but in a time in which the relative fortunes of sociology are on the decline and the fortunes of literary study are on the rise, it may have more to say now than it did even at the time of its first publication. When one considers the rise of what are now called "edge cities," those odd conglomerations of city and suburbia, whose major products are often far more closely related to the fantastic and the imaginary than to the tangible products of standard urban industrialism, perhaps a method which owes more to literary study than to the quantifying methods sociology has developed since the decline of the Chicago School is more appropriate. In that sense, The Gold Coast and the Slum may deserve a fresh look.
Book Description
Humanity has existed on earth for thousands of years yet we are just now beginning to experience a kind of community that has never before existedmdash;the slum community. As the number of slum communities and those living in them continue to rise at an alarming rate Christians need to examine their role in sharing the hope joy healing and servanthood of Christ to those in despair.Quest for Hope in the Slum Community is a collection of the diverse dialog that exists in the area of urban transformation. Everything from housing to street children along with a healthy collection of articles around a theology of urban poverty is addressed. This material is designed to stimulate the imagination of those exploring the question of how to address with compassion and conviction the stark realities of urban poverty.
Customer Reviews:
The contents of this anthology are as follows........2006-10-02
SPIRITUAL
Theology of Poverty
Transforming Society, Quezon City, Philippines : Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture, pp. 1-16
Myers, Bryant (1999) Walking with the Poor, New York, NY : Orbis Books, Maryknoll pp. 46-56
Incarnational Ministry
Companion to the Poor: Christ in the Urban Slums, Monrovia, CA : MARC pp. 17-24, 77-84
Baker, Ken (2002) "The Incarnational Model: Perception of Deception?" Evangelical Missions Quarterly, January 2002 pp. 16-24
Mission
Mission as Transformation, Oxford : Regnum pp.11-25
Gollings, Richard (1994) "Planting Covenant Communities of Faith in the City" from God So Loves the City: Seeking a Theology for Urban Mission, edited by Charles Van Engen, and J. Tiersma Monrovia, CA: MARC pp. 125-142
PHYSICAL
History
A History of World Societies, Fifth Edition, Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company pp. 1118-1141
Gugler, Josef, ed. (1996) The Urban Transformation of the Developing World, Oxford : Oxford University Press pp. 1-14
Health
Faith in Development edited by D. Belshaw, R. Calderisi and C. Sugden, Oxford: Regnum pp.131-141
Rowland, Stan (1995) "Christian Witness through Community Health" from Transforming Health, Eric Ram editor, Monrovia, CA : MARC pp.215-233
Property
DeSoto, Hernando. (2000) The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else New York : Basic Books pp. 15-37
UN Habitat (2003) "Slums in the Housing Sector," from The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003, London : Earthscan pp. 104-117
EMOTIONAL
Prostitution
"The Sex Trafficking of Children in San Diego " from El Universal Mexico City, January 9, 2003. Translated by Chuck Goolsby.
Human Rights Watch/Asia (1995) "Rape for Profit: Trafficking of Nepali Girls and Women to India 's Brothels" New York : Human Rights Watch pp. 7-12 (from "Patterns of Abuse" up through "Padma")
Children
Florence, Italy : Innocenti Research Centre pp. 8-14
Anderson, Jeff (2001) Restoring Children of the Streets: A Guide for Mobilizing and Equipping God's People Around the World, Moutlake Terrace, WA : Action International Ministries pp. 12-18
Justice
Haugen, Gary (1999) Good News About Injustice, Downers Grove : InterVarsity Press
Grigg, Viv (1990) Companion to the Poor: Christ in the Urban Slums, Monrovia, CA : MARC pp. 161-188
SOCIAL
Community Development
Transforming Power: Biblical Strategies for Making a Difference in your Community, Downers Grove : InterVarsity Press pp. 148-161
Myers, Bryant (1999) Walking with the Poor, New York, NY : Orbis Books, Maryknoll pp. 137-150
Economics
Faith in Development edited by D. Belshaw, R. Calderisi and C. Sugden, Oxford : Regnum pp.165-179
Prahalad, C.K. and Allen Hammond (2002) "Serving the World's Poor Profitably" Harvard Business Review, Boston, pp. 48-56
Ethnicity
Ethnic Conflict in World Politics, San Francisco : Westview Press pp. 1-26
Gornik, Mark (2002) To Live in Peace: Biblical Faith and the Changing Inner City, Grand Rapids : Eerdmans pp.35-50
ENVIRONMENTAL
Water and Sanitation
A Sourcebook for Poverty Reduction Strategies edited by Jeni Klugman, Washington DC : The World Bank pp. 373-379
Environmental Health Project (1996) "Health and the Environment in Urban Poor Areas: Avoiding a Crisis through Prevention," Capsule Report Number 1, March 1996, Arlington, VA : Environmental Health Project
Population
The Nine Lives of Population Control, edited by Michael Cromartie, Washington DC : Ethics and Public Policy Center. pp.102-127
V. Setty-Venugopal and U. D. Upadhyay (2002) "Birth Spacing: Three to Five Saves Lives" from Population Reports, Volume XXX, Number 2, Summer 2002, Baltimore, MD: Population Information Program pp.1-2, 7-8, 12-23
Urban Planning
Third World City : The New Urban Geography of Southeast Asia " from Urban Studies, Vol. 35, No. 12, pp. 2309-2321
Goetz, Edward (2003) Clearing the Way: Deconcentrating the Poor in Urban America Washington DC : Urban Institute Press (chapter 1)
Book Description
In Mother Teresa's House: A Hospice Nurse in the Slums of Calcutta follows nurse Rosemary Dew's journey of compassion as she travels to Calcutta to volunteer in Mother Teresa's House for Sick and Dying Destitutes. Dew offers a first-hand account of life among the poorest of the poor and how the commitment of humble volunteers can make all the difference in the world when they offer what people need most: compassion, understanding, and human dignity.
Customer Reviews:
In Mother Teresa's House.......2007-07-09
I loved this book. It was a very different perspective on life in India, in Calcutta. As a nurse, and as one who has always loved Mother Teresa - this was an excellent read.
Wonderful Book!.......2006-11-09
I liked this book even better than Rosemary's first book, 'No Backup' though I thought it was really good and read it straight through the first weekend I bought it. 'In Mother Teresa's House' tells of such a fascinating (and sometimes unnerving) adventure, yet it's not just that. This book has more than just adventure. It's about caring for people, a very basic respect for life and a loving concern for another human's (total strangers) feelings and well being. It also is very interesting from the point of view of diagnosing ailments, the intellectual medical mysteries that each person presents. I am not a medical person, so fortunately, the writing was not filled with confusing medical jargon. It was easy to read, easy to love and to recommend to friends. I've purchased several copies that I've given as gifts to friends in the medical profession, not because the book would only be of interest to someone in that profession, but because it's my way of telling my friends 'thank you' for the wonderful work each one does in their own way, with others.
Amazon.com
Though long ago bulldozed away and remade, the rough-and-tumble lower Manhattan district called Five Points was once considered to be so representative of New York that foreign journalists traveled there to gather horrifying stories for their readers. Wrote a Swedish reporter, "lower than to the Five Points it is not possible for human nature to sink."
In his wide-ranging reconstruction of Five Points's few square blocks, historian Tyler Anbinder shows that that journalist was not far off the mark. "Dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of its residents lived in windowless, teeming apartments that were unfit for habitation," he writes. Alcoholism, violence, and prostitution were commonplace. Poverty was epidemic, and living conditions were so intolerable that the reforming sociologist Jacob Riis used the area as a case study for the wretched excesses of urban life. A corrupt city government kept the police at bay, making the neighborhood safe for a succession of crime lords but woefully dangerous for residents--most of whom, in time, would be newcomers from Ireland, Italy, Russia, and other faraway lands, as well as African Americans newly arrived from the South. "Locked into the lowest-paying occupations," as Anbinder writes, they labored, saved, and eventually moved on, making room for the next wave of immigrants.
Five Points is gone, though a few of its streets remain, marking the edge of Chinatown. Anbinder's careful study brings it back to life. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
The very letters of the two words seem, as they are written, to redden with the blood-stains of unavenged crime. There is Murder in every syllable, and Want, Misery and Pestilence take startling form and crowd upon the imagination as the pen traces the words." So wrote a reporter about Five Points, the most infamous neighborhood in nineteenth-century America, the place where "slumming" was invented.
All but forgotten today, Five Points was once renowned the world over. Its handful of streets in lower Manhattan featured America's most wretched poverty, shared by Irish, Jewish, German, Italian, Chinese, and African Americans. It was the scene of more riots, scams, saloons, brothels, and drunkenness than any other neighborhood in the new world. Yet it was also a font of creative energy, crammed full of cheap theaters and dance halls, prizefighters and machine politicians, and meeting halls for the political clubs that would come to dominate not just the city but an entire era in American politics. From Jacob Riis to Abraham Lincoln, Davy Crockett to Charles Dickens, Five Points both horrified and inspired everyone who saw it. The story that Anbinder tells is the classic tale of America's immigrant past, as successive waves of new arrivals fought for survival in a land that was as exciting as it was dangerous, as riotous as it was culturally rich.
Tyler Anbinder offers the first-ever history of this now forgotten neighborhood, drawing on a wealth of research among letters and diaries, newspapers and bank records, police reports and archaeological digs. Beginning with the Irish potato-famine influx in the 1840s, and ending with the rise of Chinatown in the early twentieth century, he weaves unforgettable individual stories into a tapestry of tenements, work crews, leisure pursuits both licit and otherwise, and riots and political brawls that never seemed to let up.
Although the intimate stories that fill Anbinder's narrative are heart-wrenching, they are perhaps not so shocking as they first appear. Almost all of us trace our roots to once humble stock. Five Points is, in short, a microcosm of America.
Customer Reviews:
Irish In New York.......2006-07-29
Tyler Anbinder presents a history ostensibly focused narrowly on a lower Manhattan neighborhood. In actuality, Anbinder not only delivers the history of the Five Points area, but he also conveys a larger sense of the context and background that made this neighborhood significant. Anbinder organizes his material into very approachable chapters, each preceded by a brief illustrative anecdote or incident, which relates to the theme of the specific section.
This book here is the truth.......2006-03-11
First of all this Stockman guy who reviewed this book is a dingbat. This book here is a friggin' masterpiece of historical research into one of the many great neighborhoods that comprise the greatest city on the face of the Earth. If you don't agree, then just do us all a favor and kill yourself right now.
Brooklyn all day everyday!
Edutainment!.......2006-03-01
Five Points was the name given to the neighborhood that sprang up in New York on top of the Collect lake after it was drained and covered over in 1813. This neighborhood, having formed on the swampy land that was once home to only the worst of nuisance industries, became known throughout the nineteenth century for housing the dregs of humanity. As Anbinder states in his title, it truly was the "World's Most Notorious Slum." In fact, Five Points became an international tourist stop, attracting Charles Dickens, Abraham Lincoln, Davy Crockett, and many more to peer into the homes of the people who lived within.
Yes, Anbinder is an amazing historian. Yes, this book accomplishes many lofty goals. Anbinder introduces us to a colorful cast of characters, spotlighting the individuals, always, that make up the Five Points. In addition to newspapers and accounts from the time, which were often augmented by the prejudices of the writers, Anbinder also makes excellent use of a variety of other records, such as bank ledgers, property records, censuses, as well as a host of other valuable sources that give the reader a brief glimpse into the lives of the Five Points denizens. Anbinder's book also illustrates that the more the way Americans view poverty has changed, the more it has stayed the same. Indeed, Anbinder's history of Five Points is so exhaustive and meticulously researched, that the reader can come away with so much more than one idea about poverty, or another theory of immigrant life.
But, even more than the above, this book is exciting. It will draw you in and make you feel the humanity of all the different folks you meet. This is a history book that reads much like a novel, in the vein of "The Children's Blizzard," or "The Great Influenza." This DOES NOT read like a textbook. I can't recommend it enough.
What a Find ! !.......2003-10-27
I read this book about a year ago after "finding" it at a warehouse sale.I had not heard of it before;but was taken by the dust jacket and a quick glance.What a surprise,I almost couldn't belive how much I enjoyed it.As I said, I'd not heard of it or for that matter,the author.Here's a case where you can tell a book by it's cover.Then to my surprise we got all the publicity about a movie "The Gangs Of New York".So,off I went to see the movie,and Lo and Behold,it's basically the same story! There is much more detail in the book;but if your fort is bloody violence,movies like "the Untouchables" and "The Godfather"were more like Sunday School picnics.Both the book and the movie are good in their own ways.This book gives a good view of the Irish immigration in NYC up to the time of the civil war.It details in NYC what Kenelly does worldwide in "The Great Shame"
A Difficult-to-Read, Disorganized Book on a Great Subject.......2003-09-11
In the author's acknowledgements Anbinder describes his difficulty convincing an editor to take on the project. I am not surprised: if the published version is an indication of the organization and structure of the draft, then I cannot understand why any editor would take on the task. Judging by the the final outcome, it appears the editor Anbinder did line up lost his will to live, or at least his will to edit. The book is tergid yet verbose. It repeticiously cites a year or an event as a turning point for the Five Points area and when one (finally) arrives at that year, no detail is given as to what happend, why it happened or the transition to the new state of affairs. The best example of this is the overall pre- and post-Civil War structure the author adopts: there are only a few pages on the war itself as it relates to Five Points. Most of that is filler, relating events the happened largely outside the Five Points district.
Poor structure and difficult style asside, the research is excellent. It is a shame the author does not appear to have taken his editor's advice.
Average customer rating:
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Dublin Slums 1800-1925: A Study in Urban Geography
Jacinta Prunty
Manufacturer: Irish Academic Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0716526905 |
Book Description
With its unflinching portrayal of the squalor and brutality of turn-of-the-century New York, Maggie: A Girl of the Streetsproduced a scandal when it was first published in 1893. Crane's novel chronicles the life of Maggie Johnson, the daughter of a cruel father and drunken mother, who finds work in a collar factor and is seduced by her brother's menacing friend, Pete. Disowned by her mother, Maggie becomes a prostitute and, ultimately, a victim of despair. But more than the tale of a young woman's tragic fall, the novel is also a powerful exploration of the destructive forces that underlie urban society and human nature.
This volume also includes "George's Mother" and eleven other tales and sketches of New York written between 1892 and 1896. Together in their poised realism these tales confirm Crane's place as the first modern American writer.
"A powerful, severe, and harshly comic portrayal of Irish immigrant life in lower New York exactly a century ago."--Alfred Kazin
Customer Reviews:
The underbelly of New York at the turn of the century.......2007-01-31
If Edith Wharton captures the snobbery, superficiality, hypocrisy, materialism, and coldness of New York City's turn-of-the-century elite, Stephen Crane reveals the toughness, callousness, brutality, and violence of New York's working class. Ironically, Wharton's Lily Bart and Crane's Maggie Johnson, both romantics moving in anti-romantic spheres, share a similar fate--abandoned by their respective societies.
Unlike Wharton, Crane wrote from a primarily journalistic, dispassionate point of view. The settings, the situations, the speech, and the similes reveal the underbelly of life among the working poor. Maggie opens with "a very little boy," her brother Jim, serving as "champion" of Rum Alley, an aptly named area where life is centered on working, drinking, and fighting.
Maggie and Jim's father can't keep him from fighting because that's all the boy knows, and the torn clothes that his drunken mother bemoans cannot compare to the furniture and crockery damage that occur during their violent marital spats. The father, a drunken brute like his wife, does not understand the irony of his demand when he says, ". . . Yer allus pounding 'im . . . I can't get no rest 'cause yer allus poundin' a kid. Let up, d'yeh hear? Don't be allus poundin' a kid." The infuriated mother responds with increased savagery. "At last she tossed him to a corner where he limply lay cursing and weeping." Jim, Maggie, and even the baby Tommie seem to be as disposable as the rest of the household goods.
Life in the city is lived outwardly, and the strong do not question themselves. While "Jimmie had an idea it wasn't common courtesy for a friend to come to one's home and ruin one's sister," his contemplations of his own actions toward women are cut off by self-absolution before such introspection can lead to self-incrimination. Later, Pete will share this attitude when Maggie attempts, in his mind, "to give him some responsibility in a matter that did not concern him."
Maggie and Jimmie's parents represent an extreme. Everyone knows their family's business, from the residents who share their tenement with its "gruesome doorway" to the group of urchins who waylay the mother as she is ejected from a saloon for "disturbance." The Johnsons' troubles delight the neighbors; the old woman downstairs tells Jim that "deh funnies' t'ing I ever saw" was Maggie "a-cryin' as if her heart would break, she was. It was deh funnies' t'ing I ever saw."
In the midst of this squalor, Maggie does have an inner life. Combined with her romanticism and naïveté, it convinces her that Pete is the height of urbane sophistication as he bullies waiters, telling them to "git off deh eart'." Interestingly, as she toils over "eternal collars and cuffs," Maggie has a daydream that foreshadows Pete's final chapter in the novel; she imagines him with a half dozen women "and thought he must lean dangerously toward an indefinite one, whom she pictured with great charms of person, but with an altogether contemptible disposition."
In Maggie's final appearance, Crane does not use her name, which perhaps answers her question from the preceding chapter: "Who?" She begins her anonymous journey near a theater district, where the affluent emerge from "a place of forgetfulness." Her wanderings on this one night reflect her life over the previous several months, as she leaves behind the bright light and glamor on a trail of rejection that leads ever downward, until she meets a wreck of a human, who follows "the girl of the crimson legions." No longer Maggie, she represents those whose naivete, hopes, and foolish romantic dreams are crushed by the code of toughness that Jimmie fights for at the beginning and the hypocrisy that her lamenting mother exhibits at her fall.
These stories can be hard to read, partly because most of the relationships seem detached or distant at best and bitterly heartless at worst. Maggie's father talks about pounding "a kid" as though they are not his own and have nothing to do with him. Pete is "stuck" on Maggie's shape only until she gets in the way of greater desires. George of George's Mother is happiest when he has made his old mother miserable. At the same time his "friends," whose habits and exhortations have led to his downfall, abandon him, just as he turned on his mother.
Love is a rare visitor to Crane's pages, apparent mostly in the maternal indulgences of George's Mother and the rediscovered affection of Mr. and Mrs. Binks in "Mr. Binks' Day Off." It is only in the countryside of New Jersey that the battling Binkses find a moment in which to express genuine affection: "Mrs. Binks had stolen forth her arm and linked it with his. Her head leaned softly against his shoulder."
Notably, the other loving relationship, between a child and "A Dark-Brown Dog," is marked by the brutality of the one and the submissiveness of the other. Their friendship begins when "the child lifted his hand and struck the dog a blow upon the head"; the dog "sank down in despair at the child's feet." In the world both know, the more powerful must domineer, and the weaker must submit. Living by this simple rule, however, does not guarantee survival.
Crane self-published Maggie, and it is sometimes clear that his work could have benefited from an editor's counsel. For example, similes such as, "The little boy ran to the halls, shrieking like a monk in an earthquake," are ineffective and draw too much attention to themselves. Yet these stories are an amazing accomplishment of observation and writing that make Crane's premature death at age 28 even more tragic.
A bleak uncompromising novel of New York's "lower depths"........2004-11-16
This is a great book,I love this book,though it is almost unbearably sad.The novel's uncompromising realism in its portrayl of stunted,wasted and degraded lives in the New York tenements of the 1890's,horrified many of Stephen Crane's contemporaries,and he initially had to pay to have it privately published(it was his first novel).Only when he became famous as the author of "The Red Badge of Courage",was there a proper edition.Crane railed at "sentimentality",which he saw as an artistic curse.There is no sentimentality in this book,and Crane proved that a good writer could still move the reader to tears without purple prose.
Brilliant Writing!.......2004-04-07
I am amazed at the fact that Stephen Crane was only twenty-one when he wrote this story "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets". I found it to be a genuine effort to tell a story from the inside-out instead of the usual outside-in.
I also found Crane's style very addictive. When I moved on to my next novel, I truly missed Cran's writing style. If you haven't read any of Crane's works, I suggest you start off with Maggie to see how you like him.
See ya next review:
www.therunninggirl.com
Well written book about 1890's slum life.......2003-12-31
This book was well written. The naturalistic setting and expressive use of slang transport you back to the nasty means streets of New York at the turn of the century. Some of their values seem kind of quaint and rustic as compared to 100 years later, however the realism is staggering. One can feel the despair of a terrible life that never gets better. Death and disease are the only fates that await and there is no release.
This is not just a book to be read as an assignment, read it for the realistic view of history as a slice of life to understand what New Yorker's were going through then, and as a parable to ghetto life today. Some things have changed but some still stay the same......plus ca change.......
What Are You People Thinking?.......2001-02-02
I'm sorry, but real life is not as pleasurable as you and I would like it to be. Stephen Crane was one of the first authors to write about life and war as an unpleasant, realistic thing. I think his writing is like a wakeup call for people like the writers of previous entries, because life is full of sad, depressing things, such as pain and rejection. As for the vocabulary and writing style, I assume that the writers of previous entries are not in second grade anymore, so they should be able to follow, understand, and appreciate the works of some of the greatest American novelists, such as Stephen Crane.
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