Thursday, 29 January 2015

Hell's Kitchen - Benjamin Appel

"Teen-Age Vice Amid The Slums Of - Hell's Kitchen"


LION BOOKS 95
NEW YORK, USA
1ST PRINTING AUGUST 1952

A STINKING SLAB CUT OUT OF A GREAT CITY...

Five avenues wide, stretching from the saloons of 8th Avenue to the rotting docks on the Hudson River, slashing north two or three slum-ridden streets - that was Hell's Kitchen.

Where kids were born and became thugs before they got thrown out of school, and died before they were old enough to vote - their bullet-splattered flesh eventually staining the pavement just another shade darker. Where backyard clubs taught the delinquents to be gangsters and the gangsters to be killers.

One man knows this stinking slab cut out of a great city, knows it better and tells it better than any man ever before him. That man is Benjamin Appel. Here is a book that throbs with all the pulse of life and lechery, of heroes and hoodlums, of innocent painted dolls and prostitutes. When you read Hell's Kitchen you will know why William Saroyan said: "Benjamin Appel-you are the best story writer in America."

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