Online Video Guide

New York City, 1863. Before there was the city we know today, a city of wealth, power and infinite dreams, New York was a very different place, a fledgling young city where the desire for a better life raged in crime-ridden streets. Here, as the Nation s own survival was being tested by the ongoing Civil War, a vast and dangerous underworld was born in the streets. These were the Gangs of New York, as portrayed in Herbert Asbury s classic book, whose racketeering, bootlegging, swindling, gambling and murdering would become legendary and whose culture of corruption threatened the very survival of America s working people. In the young, unfinished City, it was a time of ruthlessness, intolerance and fear. But it was also a time of extraordinary bravery, as those pushed to the edge fought for the freedom of future generations. Director Martin Scorsese sets his epic drama Gangs of New York in this defining moment in New York City history, an era whose conflicts helped define who and what