Monk Eastman: The Gangster Who Became a War Hero Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is divided into three parts. Part One relates Eastman's life as a roughneck gangster on New York's Lower East Side, and his subsequent imprisonment in both Sing Sing and Clinton Prison in New York. Part Two covers Monk's participation in France during World War I. Part Three involves Eastman's return to New York City following World War I.
A crime infested environment on New York's Lower East Side entrapped Eastman into a life of crime as it did for several others. Immigrants to New York were sad to see their children turn to a life of crime as a way of life. This section of the book really makes a mockery of the poem on the Statue of Liberty "Give me your tired and poor yearning to be free." The "tired and poor" were thrown into a garbage dump on the Lower East Side of New York making them wonder why they ever came to this country.
Despite not having received any medals for his bravery during World War I Monk Eastman distinguished himself in the eyes of his peers. He was several years older than the average soldier, and his "combat" in New York in the slums of New York actually worked to his benefit in adjusting to life in the army. A fellow doughboy was about to shoot a German soldier approximately fifteen years old when Eastman told him to take the boy as a prisoner of war instead.
With the conclusion of the Great War Eastman returned to New York just as Prohibition was about to take place. Following a drinking party Eastman was shot and killed under mysterious circumstances which still contains a number of unanswered questions.
I especially liked what the Reverend James Lockwood of a Methodist Church said at Eastman's funeral. In part he said, "It has been said there is so much bad in the best of us, so much good in the worst of us, that it does not become any of us to think harshly of the rest of us. That is one way of saying, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."

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An intimate biography as well as an epic history, Monk Eastman vividly recounts the life and times of old New York’s most infamous gangster-cum-soldier as he made his way from the sooty streets and dingy saloons of the Lower East Side to the battlefields of the Western Front.Born in 1873 to a respectable New York family, Monk was running wild in Manhattan’s rough Lower East Side by the age of eighteen. He found work as a bouncer—when the saloon owner first turned him down because he had two bouncers already, Monk beat them both up and was promptly hired in their place. He soon developed a loyal following of immigrant toughs, and by 1900, he was the most feared gang leader in lower Manhattan, protected by corrupt politicians and crooked cops, and commanding an army of two thousand pickpockets, thieves, prostitutes, and thugs. But changing neighborhood demographics and shifting political fortunes colluded against Monk: after a pitched battle with Pinkerton detectives, he was sent to Sing Sing on a ten-year sentence, and his territory quickly slipped from his grasp. In 1917, no longer safe from the law—or from rival gangs—Monk joined the New York National Guard. As a gangster, he’d been the equivalent of a general; as an enlisted man, Monk was just another private. After several months of combat training, Monk’s division of Brooklyn recruits was thrown headlong into the bitter trench warfare in Europe. His experience in gangland combat served him well: he was repeatedly cited by his superiors for his bravery and he received a hero’s welcome back in New York and an offical pardon from the governor. But Monk’s gangland past was not so easily erased and caught up with him in the end. In Neil Hanson’s able hands, Monk’s unique and compelling story becomes an emblem of a time of upheaval—for New York and for the nation.

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