Please join us as Carol Kaelin leads a discussion of Tyler Anbinder's Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum.

Tyler Anbinder has provided us with a much-needed upgrade to the history of the notorious 19th-century Five Points neighborhood of lower Manhattan. Relying on a wide variety of sources including census lists, police reports, the records of charitable organizations and real estate companies, as well as personal documents, he tells the intimate stories of the German, Jewish, Italian, Irish, Chinese and African-American immigrants that crowded into this neighborhood. And, beyond the individual anecdotes, the social, cultural, political, and economic history of this densely-packed melting pot of humanity is engagingly recounted. Booklist wrote that it’s “a marvelously tactile work that radiates how this legendary immigrant neighborhood pulsed with schemes, dreams, and despair.”