Editorial Review:

Product Description:
For five days in July 1863, at the height of the Civil War, New York City was under siege. Angry rioters burned draft offices, closed factories, destroyed railroad tracks and telegraph lines, and hunted policemen and soldiers. Before long, the rioters turned their murderous wrath against the black community. In the end, at least 105 people were killed, making the draft riots the most violent insurrection in American history.
In this vividly written book, Iver Bernstein tells the compelling story of the New York City draft riots. He details how what began as a demonstration against the first federal draft soon expanded into a sweeping assault against the local institutions and personnel of Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party as well as a grotesque race riot. Bernstein identifies participants, dynamics, causes and consequences, and demonstrates that the "winners" and "losers" of the July 1863 crisis were anything but clear, even after five regiments rushed north from Gettysburg restored order. In a tour de force of historical detection, Bernstein shows that to evaluate the significance of the riots we must enter the minds and experiences of a cast of characters--Irish and German immigrant workers, Wall Street businessmen who frantically debated whether to declare martial law, nervous politicians in Washington and at City Hall. Along the way, he offers new perspectives on a wide range of topics: Civil War society and politics, patterns of race, ethnic and class relations, the rise of organized labor, styles of leadership, philanthropy and reform, strains of individualism, and the rise of machine politics in Boss Tweed's Tammany regime.
An in-depth study of one of the most troubling and least understood crises in American history, The New York City Draft Riots is the first book to reveal the broader political and historical context--the complex of social, cultural and political relations--that made the bloody events of July 1863 possible.

This is a fine, insightful study of the New York "Draft" Riots, which were about far more than military conscription. It does have some problems of organization and repetition, as others note. Overly harsh critics probably assume that this is a conventional, event-oriented tale of the riots themselves, but Bernstein's forte is analysis rather than narrative. He explains their context, causes and importance for understanding urban tensions in an era of intense stuggles over freedom, industrialization, work, wages, immigration, assimilation and exclusion. He tells the story well enough (though a coherent chronology is hard to locate), focusing on what it reveals about a period of fundamental change in US history. See also T. Anbinder, "Five Points;" N. Ignatiev, "How the Irish Became White;" and the hoary tome by H. Asbury, "Gangs of New York."

Average Rating:

Rating: - Race & Class In Civil War America
This is a fine, insightful study of the New York "Draft" Riots, which were about far more than military conscription. It does have some problems of organization and repetition, as others note. Overly harsh critics probably assume that this is a conventional, event-oriented tale of the riots themselves, but Bernstein's forte is analysis rather than narrative. He explains their context, causes and importance for understanding urban tensions in an era of intense stuggles over freedom, industrialization, work, wages, immigration, assimilation and exclusion. He tells the story well enough (though a coherent chronology is hard to locate), focusing on what it reveals about a period of fundamental change in US history. See also T. Anbinder, "Five Points;" N. Ignatiev, "How the Irish Became White;" and the hoary tome by H. Asbury, "Gangs of New York."

Rating: - Unbelievably Boring
If you want to read about the New York City draft riots, do not read this book. As other reviewers have stated the book draggs on and is rediculously repetitive. In addition, the wording of the book makes for a very boring read, and becomes quite confusing at times.

Knowing little about the Draft Riots, I was hoping to learn something. But what I realized, however, is that in order to read this book you must know much about the political history of New York, and have a great desire to learn about trade unions.

How this type of book was released by Oxford press is beyond me. In any case, I found this book to be a waste of time and energy with little use or worth. I would not recommend it at all

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Rating: - Editor? Hello, Editor?
If you're looking for descriptive battle sequences of the three-day riot which rocked New York City in July of 1863, this is NOT the book to read. Carefully (and thankfully) avoiding the sensationalism that often accompanies discussions of these draft riots, this book was one of the first to identify and discuss the causes (political, social, economic, racial, etc.) that led up to this insurgence. And, for this, Mr. Bernstein has done a more than admirable job.

However, and as the other reviewer mentions, the book suffers--really suffers--from a good deal of repetition and a haphazard presentation of statistics and other data. Not that the stats don't belong--they absolutely do--I just wish they had been more smoothly incorporated. This is why the title to this review asks where Mr. Bernstein's editor was. Any decent editor could have made this a more engaging text. It could and should maintain its scholarly style, but it doesn't have to be as dry, distant and self-referring as it is now.

My only other critique: Similar riots exploded in Brooklyn during those same days, but little mention is made of that. The reasons for those riots weren't exactly the same. A comparison of the two uprisings would have been interesting. Still, this is a well-researched book but it should only be read for research purposes.

Rocco Dormarunno, author of The Five Points

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Rating: - Why I Hated History in College as Well as High School
I will make this short and to the point. In my later years I've grown to love reading history. This book reminded me of why I hated it in school. The back cover reviews are deceiving. If you enjoy torturing yourself, read this book. It is dry and repetitive. In the first three chapters I had to keep going back to check and see if I was reading the same chapter again and again. I don't expect every book to be a winner but I don't want to feel as if I were in a classroom with a professor who drones on and on in a monotone while spewing tons of info that could have been presented in a more cohesive manor. I had to force myself to read each new sentence in a majority of the book. I find the subject fascinating but this book is not.

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