author
Herbert Asbury
1891–1963
Drawn to the rough edges of American history, this journalist turned the stories of gangs, gamblers, and city vice into vivid narrative nonfiction. His best-known books helped shape the popular image of the urban underworld in places like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.
1 Audiobook
Up from Methodism
by Herbert Asbury
About the author
Herbert Asbury was an American journalist and writer known for lively books about crime, vice, and street life in the United States. Born in Farmington, Missouri, in 1891 and later based in New York, he built his reputation by digging into the folklore and records of the 19th- and early-20th-century underworld.
He is best remembered for works such as The Gangs of New York, The Barbary Coast, Gem of the Prairie, and Sucker's Progress. Rather than writing conventional academic history, Asbury blended reporting, anecdote, and colorful detail, which gave his books a fast, memorable style that still attracts readers interested in the darker corners of American city life.
Asbury died in 1963, but his work has had a long afterlife. The Gangs of New York in particular remained widely known and introduced new generations of readers to his dramatic, gritty approach to popular history.