Recent Years
The 2002 film Gangs of New York revitalized interest in Asbury and many of Asbury's works, mostly chronicling the largely hidden history of the seamier side of American popular culture, have been reissued. In 2008, The Library of America selected an excerpt from The Gangs of New York for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.
Although his books have long been popular within the true crime genre, commentators such as Luc Sante, Tyler Anbinder and Tracy Melton have suggested that Asbury took journalistic liberties with his material. However, Asbury's books generally feature lengthy bibliographies, noting the newspapers, books, pamphlets, police reports and personal interviews he drew upon for his works. Most are footnoted, citing source material by publication title, date and page.
In 2005, Tracy Melton claimed in his book Hanging Henry Gambrill: The Violent Career of Baltimore's Plug Uglies, 1854-1860 that the Plug Uglies were actually a Baltimore-based gang. New York newspapers compared the Dead Rabbits to the Baltimore Plug Uglies following the July 4, 1857 riots, which occurred just a month after Plug Ugly involvement in the Know-Nothing Riot in Washington. Melton further speculated that Asbury had apparently read these accounts and inaccurately incorporated the Plug Uglies into his book The Gangs of New York.
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Famous quotes containing the word years:
“Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
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