Episode 35: Gangs of New York with Tyler Anbinder

This week we have a guest with a keen understanding of a film: Dr. Tyler Anbinder joins us to talk about Gangs of New York, Martin Scorsese's 2002 epic that about the rise of the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. Tyler is not only an expert on the histories of New York City and of immigration, but served as an advisor for the film. He was, in this case, an actual historian at the movies. We talk about a range of topics: 19th century politics, immigration, nativism, race, the Civil War, New York, and of course, his experiences with the film itself. We also got a chance to touch on his upcoming book, and I hope to have him back on next year to talk about that. Really thrilled to have him on the podcast and I hope you dig the talk.

About our guest:
Tyler Anbinder is a specialist in nineteenth-century American politics and the history of immigration and ethnicity in American life. His most recent book, City of Dreams (2016), is a history of immigrant life in New York City from the early 1600s to the present.  Before that, in 2001, he published Five Points, a history of nineteenth-century America's most infamous immigrant slum, focusing in particular on tenement life, inter-ethnic relations, and ethnic politics.  His first book, Nativism and Slavery (1992), analyzed the role of the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic Know Nothing party on the political crisis that led to the Civil War. Professor Anbinder has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and held the Fulbright Thomas Jefferson Chair in American History at the University of Utrecht. He has won awards for his scholarship from the Organization of American Historians, the Columbia University School of Journalism, and the journal Civil War History. He also served as a historical consultant to Martin Scorsese for the making of The Gangs of New York. His forthcoming book, to be published in March 2024 by Little, Brown, is entitled Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York. That project's digital history component, created with research assistance from more than two dozen GW students, has already been completed and can be found at http://beyondragstoriches.org.