- Paperback: 512 pages
- Publisher: Basic Books; Reprint edition (Feb 7 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1560254947
- ISBN-13: 978-1560254942
- Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 13.4 x 3.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 522 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #373,262 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
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 French Quarter, Herbert Asbury, author of The Gangs of New York, chronicles this rather 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, photograph-filled journey through a unique version of the American underworld.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Time machine,
By
This review is from: The French Quarter: An Informal History Of the New Orleans Underworld (Paperback)
I thought this book was excellent.We'd recently been to New Orleans and had been recommended this book by one of the Tour guides there. I found it a fascinating glimpse into the the history of New Orleans and the characters who lived there. Also considering it was written in the late twenties it reads pretty well and doesn't have the dry dated feel so many books from that era have.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful-With Caveats,
By A Customer
This review is from: The French Quarter: An Informal History Of the New Orleans Underworld (Paperback)
This book stops at 1917 with the closing of Storyville, and was first published in 1938. If at all possible, buy a good original printing. The trade paperback now out has poor, small reproductions of the original illustrations. This is a wonderful, engaging, laugh-out-loud book to be read time and time again. However, it has some factual errors. Asbury implies that Storyville was in the French Quarter-it was not. He also repeats verbatim some "legends" that were invented long after the fact. If you want a correct history of Storyville, see Al Rose's book.
4.0 out of 5 stars
N'awlins rough,
By
This review is from: The French Quarter: An Informal History Of the New Orleans Underworld (Paperback)
THE FRENCH QUARTER is a history of crime, vice, and general rascality in New Orleans from its founding in 1718 by the French to the abolition of the Storyville red-light district in 1917.In fifteen chapters, author Herbert Asbury describes the disruptive roles played by keelboat ruffians, revolutionists, gamblers, duelists, prostitutes, corrupt cops and politicians, pirates, filibusters (soldiers of fortune), vigilantes, pickpockets, muggers, thugs, the Mafia, and voodoo practitioners in the lives of the otherwise law-abiding citizenry. Anyone reading Asbury's narrative might be led to believe that good folks were a miniscule minority. THE FRENCH QUARTER suffers from being published almost seventy years ago. Aside from a number of old sketch reproductions, and several badly reproduced B&W photographs of bordello interiors and exteriors during the Storyville era, THE FRENCH QUARTER is sadly lacking in illustration. There's not even a map of the city from which to get one's bearings. This work is wonderfully informative as far as it goes, perhaps occasionally more so than is needed to make the point that the city, especially in the mid-1800s, could be a noxious place. The narrative is sober and straightforward, only occasionally displaying dry humor. A couple examples from the text will suffice to give one a sense of the book's tone and the city's iniquity. Regarding barrel-houses,the lowest form of drinking place: "The owner of one such establishment not only doped all of his liquor, but maintained his own staff of sneak thieves ... (who) worked on a percentage basis and took turns robbing the sodden wretches who were dragged from the barrel-house." Regarding the streetwalkers of the Dauphine and Burgundy Street vice area after the Civil War: Decades after THE FRENCH QUARTER appeared, N'awlins is a model of purity. Why, would you believe me if I said you can't even spit on the street?
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