AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
![]() |
Home |  Store List |  FAQ |  Contact Us |   | ||
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
![]() |
Title: Gangsters and Gold Diggers: Old New York, the Jazz Age, and the Birth of Broadway by Jerome Charyn ISBN: 1-56858-278-1 Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows Pub. Date: October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.25 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Lullabye of Broadway
Comment: This book is simply awash in great little anecdotes about the folks who spent their days in and around the Broadway of the early part of the 20th century. We get tales of the famous and the infamous, the good and the bad, the rich and the not so rich, and a myriad of supporting characters so colorful they could fill a Damon Runyan book of stories. It's not meant to be a book of mini biographies, but there are some interesting lives explored. The book also contains one of the most incisive analyses of "The Great Gatsby" I've ever read. If the author leaves you wishing for more information about some of the people you meet, that may be the book's only failing: it's too short. I could really have enjoyed reading another few hundred pages about the people and places he describes!
Rating: 2
Summary: Who edited this book?
Comment: Well, this book is filled with lots of interesting stories, but it's so disorganized it seems like it was written by an Jazz age drunk! Better editing would have done wonders for this book which has great stories about some of the celebrities of the 1920's, but flows sloppily from one anecdote to another.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Colorful Historic Era
Comment: Author Jerome Charyn provides the reader with a cast of colorful characters such as Arnold Rothstein who used to enjoy wasting his time in Lindy's Restaurant, Al Jolson who was very difficult to live with and a self promoter, Legs Diamond, who detective Johnny Broderick once stuffed into a garbage can, Flo Ziegfeld, who glamorized the American girl, former singing waiter Irving Berlin who sang at Nigger Mike's and then went on to become the writer of over one thousand songs. Author Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald and wife Zelda, gangster Owney Madden, Fannie Brice and her husband Billy Rose who was 5' 3 1/2" in his elevator shoes "who walked with the bounce of an overwound toy." Bert Gordon, W.C. Fields, Ruby Keeler, boxers Jack Dempsey and Johnson, and, of course, The Bambino himself, George Herman Ruth. The book is filled with anecdotes of these and other famous and infamous characters that made The Great White Way the historic place it is today. If you like social history you should love this book. I did come to one conclusion about a great majority of these individuals. As famous or infamous they may have been, many of them shared a feeling of loneliness even though they were major players in American social history.
![]() |
Title: The Colossus of New York: A City in 13 Parts by COLSON WHITEHEAD ISBN: 0385507941 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
![]() |
Title: The Devil's Playground : A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square by JAMES TRAUB ISBN: 0375507884 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 16 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
![]() |
Title: The Island at the Center of the World : The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan, the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America by RUSSELL SHORTO ISBN: 0385503490 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 16 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
![]() |
Title: The Night Club Era by Stanley Walker, Alva Johnston ISBN: 0801862914 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
![]() |
Title: Down and Dirty Pictures : Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film by Peter Biskind ISBN: 068486259X Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 06 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments