The Nether Side Of New York

Reprint of the original, first published in 1872.

"A remarkable tale."—Chicago Tribune In George Appo's world, child pickpockets swarmed the crowded streets, addicts drifted in furtive opium dens, and expert swindlers worked the lucrative green-goods game. On a good night Appo made as much as a skilled laborer made in a year. Bad nights left him with more than a dozen scars and over a decade in prisons from the Tombs and Sing Sing to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he reunited with another inmate, his father. The child of Irish and Chinese immigrants, Appo grew up in the notorious Five Points and Chinatown neighborhoods. He rose as an exemplar of the "good fellow," a criminal who relied on wile, who followed a code of loyalty even in his world of deception. Here is the underworld of the New York that gave us Edith Wharton, Boss Tweed, Central Park, and the Brooklyn Bridge.

The First World War constitutes a point in the history of New York when its character and identity were challenged, recast and reinforced. Due to its pre-eminent position as a financial and trading centre, its role in the conflict was realised far sooner than elsewhere in the United States. This book uses city, state and federal archives, newspaper reports, publications, leaflets and the well-established ethnic press in the city at the turn of the century to explore how the city and its citizens responded to their role in the First World War, from the outbreak in August 1914, through the official entry of the United States in to the war in 1917, and after the cessation of hostilities in the memorials and monuments to the conflict. The war and its aftermath forever altered politics, economics and social identities within the city, but its import is largely obscured in the history of the twentieth century. This book therefore fills an important gap in the histories of New York and the First World War.

For generations, New Yorkers have joked about "The City's" interminable tearing down and building up. The city that the whole world watches seems to be endlessly remaking itself. When the locals and the rest of the world say "New York," they mean Manhattan, a crowded island of commercial districts and residential neighborhoods, skyscrapers and tenements, fabulously rich and abjectly poor cheek by jowl. Of course, it was not always so; New York's metamorphosis from compact port to modern metropolis occurred during the mid-nineteenth century. Empire City tells the story of the dreams that inspired the changes in the landscape and the problems that eluded solution.Author David Scobey paints a remarkable panorama of New York's uneven development, a city-building process careening between obsessive calculation and speculative excess. Envisioning a new kind of national civilization, "bourgeois urbanists" attempted to make New York the nation's pre-eminent city. Ultimately, they created a mosaic of grand improvements, dynamic change, and environmental disorder. Empire City sets the stories of the city's most celebrated landmarks--Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge, the downtown commercial center--within the context of this new ideal of landscape design and a politics of planned city building. Perhaps such an ambitious project for guiding growth, overcoming spatial problems, and uplifting the public was bound to fail; still, it grips the imagination.

Parkhurst's challenge -- The buttons -- Democratic city, Republican nation -- Anarchy vs. corruption -- A rocky start -- Managing vice, extorting business -- "Reform never suffers from frankness" -- "A landslide, a tidal wave, a cyclone" -- Endgames -- Epilogue: the Lexow effect

The Origins of Criminology: A Reader is a collection of nineteenth-century texts from the key originators of the practice of criminology – selected, introduced, and with commentaries by the leading scholar in this area, Nicole Rafter. This book presents criminology as a unique field of study that took root in a context in which urbanization, immigration, and industrialization changed the class structure of Western nations. As relatively homogenous communities became more sharply divided and aware of a bottom-most group, the 'dangerous classes', a new segment of the middle class emerged: professionals involved in the work of social control. Tracing the intellectual origins of criminology to physiognomy, phrenology, and evolutionary theories, this book demonstrates criminology's background in new attitudes toward science and the development of scientific methodologies applicable to social and mental phenomena. Through an expert selection of original texts, it traces the emergence of ‘criminology’ as a new field purporting to produce scientific knowledge about crime and criminals.