Herbert Asbury (September 1, 1889 – February 24, 1963) was an American journalist and writer probably best known for his The Gangs of New York, which Martin Scorsese adapted into a 2002 film. September 1 is the 244th day of the year (245th in leap years). ... 1889 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... February 24 is the 55th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1963 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... A journalist is a person who practices journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and people. ... The term writer can apply to anyone who creates a written work, but the word more usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, or those who have written in many different forms. ... Martin Scorsese Martin Scorsese (pronounced as Scor-SEH-see) (born November 17, 1942 in Queens, New York, USA) is an American film director. ...

Gangs revitalized interest in Asbury. In earlier decades, he was known for his self-described "informal histories": Descriptions of various cities, focusing on violence, prostitution and other lurid events. His books were popular, but critics have suggested that Asbury took journalistic liberties with his sensationalistic (and often unsourced) material, which included interviews, newspapers and police reports.

Biography

Asbury was a disenchanted Southern Methodist from Missouri. He rebelled early against his straight-laced upbringing, characterized its bigotry and hypoocrisy in his first book, and threw himself into the lore of urban crime, gangsterism, prostitution and gambling as a popular historian. He had served in World War I, where he was gassed, permanently weakening his lungs. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South was the so-called Southern Methodist Church resulting from the split in the Methodist Episcopal Church which had been brewing over several years until it came out into the open at a conference held in Louisville, Kentucky in 1845. ... Missouri, named after the Missouri Siouan Indian tribe meaning canoe, is a Midwestern state in the United States with Jefferson City as its capital. ... World War I was primarily a European conflict with many facets: immense human sacrifice, stalemate trench warfare, and the use of new, devastating weapons - tanks, aircraft, machineguns, and poison gas. ... The heart with relation to the lungs (from an older edition of Grays Anatomy) This x-ray of the human chest shows the lungs as dark regions The lung is an organ belonging to the respiratory system and interfacing to the circulatory system of air-breathing vertebrates. ...

Asbury achieved first notoriety with a story that H.L. Mencken published in his magazine, The American Mercury in 1926. The story detailed a prostitute from Asbury's hometown of Farmington, Missouri. The prostitute took her Protestant customers to the Catholic cemetery and her Catholic customers to the Protestant cemetery; some in Farmington considered the prostitute beyond redemption. H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (September 12, 1880 - January 29, 1956) was a twentieth century journalist and social critic, a cynic and a freethinker, known as the Sage of Baltimore and the American Nietzsche. He is often regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the early 20th... The American Mercury was a periodical first published in 1924 and edited by the noted drama critic George Jean Nathan and the journalistic gadfly Henry Louis Mencken. ... Prostitution is the sale of sexual services (typically manual stimulation, oral sex, sexual intercourse, or anal sex) for cash or other kind of return, generally indiscriminately with many persons. ... Farmington is a city located in St. ... Protestantism is a general grouping of denominations within Christianity. ...

The article caused a sensation: The Boston Watch and Ward Society had the magazine banned. Mencken then journeyed to Boston, sold a copy of his magazine on Boston Commons, and was arrested. Sales of the recently-founded Mercury boomed, and Asbury was a celebrity. Asbury then focused his attention of a series of articles debunking temperence crusader Carrie Nation. Nickname: Beantown, The Hub (of the Universe), Athens of America Location in Massachusetts Founded  -Incorporated September 17, 1630 1820, as a city  County Suffolk County Mayor Thomas Menino (Dem) Area  - Total  - Water 232. ... Temperance advocate Carrie Nation and her little hatchet. ...

Many of Asbury's works, mostly chronicling the largely hidden history of the seamier side of American popular culture, have been reissued. They include New General Catalog of Old Books and Authors:

• Up From Methodism 1926. (The title is intended as a reminiscence of Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery.)
• A Methodist Saint : The Life of Bishop Asbury1927. A biography of Asbury's progenitor, Rev. Francis Asbury
• The Devil of Pei-ling 1927. A novel.
• The Tick of the Clock 1928. A novel.
• The Gangs of New York : An Informal History of the Underworld 1928. Republished in 2001 with a foreword by Jorge Luis Borges.
• Not at Night: A Collection of Weird Tales
• The Bon Vivant's Companion : Or, How to Mix Drinks (with Jerry Thomas) 1928.
• [The Life of] Carry Nation 1928.
• Ye Olde Fire Laddies Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1930. An informal history of firefighting in New York City.
• The Barbary Coast : An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld 1933. 1933 ISBN 1560254084
• All Around the Town : Murder, Scandal, Riot and Mayhem in Old New York 1934. (reissued as a "Sequel to Gangs of New York)
• The Breathless Moment (with Philip van Doren Stern) 1935.
• The French Quarter : An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld 1936. ISBN 1560254947
• Sucker's Progress : An Informal History of Gambling in America 1938.
• Gem of the Prairie : An Informal History of the Chicago Underworld 1940. Northern Illinois University Press reissued it in 1986 with a preface by Perry R. Duis. It was again reissued as The Gangs of Chicago ISBN 1560254548
• The Golden Flood : An Informal History of America's First Oil Field Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1941 (often dated 1942).
• The Great Illusion: An Informal History of Prohibition 1950.

Booker T. Washington Booker Taliferro Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 15, 1915) was an African American educator and author. ... Francis Asbury (1745-1816) was born at Handsworth, near Birmingham, England of Methodist parents. ... Jorge Luis Borges (bôr′hĕs) (/ˈxoɾ.xe luˈis ˈboɾ.xes/ in IPA) (August 24, 1899 – June 14, 1986) was an Argentine writer who is considered to be one of the foremost writers of the 20th century. ... Temperance advocate Carrie Nation and her little hatchet. ... Prohibition agents destroying barrels of alcohol. ...

Motion Pictures

Asbury is credited with three crime-thriller screenplays for Columbia Pictures, which he co-wrote with Fred Niblo Jr: The Columbia Pictures logo, used from 1993 to current. ...

• 1934 Name the Woman (A Cub reporter on the crime beat established the innocence of a woman he has wrongly implicated.) [1]
• 1934 Among the Missing Worked up from a "laughably implausible" (TV Guide) story by Florence Wagner
• 1934 Fugitive Lady

The adaption of Gangs of New York was so loose that Gangs was nominated for "Best Original Screenplay" rather than as a screenplay adapted from another work.

External link

• A site devoted to Herbert Asbury