My Washington Times Review Of Tong Wars: The Untold Story Of Vice, Money And Murder In New York's Chinatown

My review of Scott D. Seligman's Tong Wars: The Untold Story of Vice, Money and Murder in New York's Chinatown appeared in the Washington Times.

Historian Scott D. Seligman offers an interesting and true tale about the Chinese gang wars in New York City from the 1890s through the 1930s. The 30-year-long gang wars resulted in many brutal murders, injustice, tragedy and rampant crime and corruption. The tong wars also made lurid headlines in the newspapers of the day. How the tong wars began, how they were waged, and how they finally ended is what Mr. Seligman’s book is all about.

“This is the story of four bloody wars and countless skirmishes fought intermittently over more than three decades inNew York’s Chinatown and the Chinese quarters of several other cities in America’s East and Midwest, with their attendant casualties, peace parleys, and treaties,” Mr. Seligman writes.

Mr. Seligman states that this is also the story of a veritable army of precinct captains, detectives, and uniformed officers bound and determined to stop the tong wars.

“Or at least to line their pockets,” he adds.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/9/book-review-tong-wars-the-untold-story-of-vice-mon/

'Tong Wars’ Details New York City's Chinatown’s Bloody Past As Two Early 20th-Century Gangs Fought For The Neighborhood's Control

Sherryl Connelly at the New York Daily News offers a piece on Scott D. Seligman's new book on the Chinese Tong Wars in New York City.

At the dawn of the 20th century, New York’s Chinatown was the scene of a vicious and bloody gang war that has been all but obscured by history.

While the Italian and Irish gang wars of the era have been exhaustively documented, and mined for entertainment value in movies like Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York,” only now does a new book give Chinatown its due.

“Tong Wars: The Untold Story of Vice, Money and Murder in New York’s Chinatown,” by Scott D. Seligman, tells the blood-soaked story of how two criminal syndicates warred for control of Chinatown in the first decade of the new century.

At stake were the payouts from the many gambling and opium dens as well as the brothels that made Chinatown a major lure not just for other Chinese immigrants but also for white New Yorkers, too.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/tong-wars-reveals-feuding-gangs-chinatown-article-1.2714292