Tong Wars by Scott D. Seligman (Viking). This wild ramble around Chinatown in its darkest days—when tongs, or gangs, warred for control of opium dens and illegal gambling rooms—is a colorful study of Tammany Hall-era Manhattan. Constructed from a vast trove of primary-source materials, such as the New York Post (which was as gleeful about Chinatown bloodbaths then as it is about celebrity gossip today), the book chronicles gang brawls that took the form of pranks (enemies trapped in a basement, in two feet of standing water) and murder (during a play at the Doyers Street Chinese Theatre, gang members fired guns into the audience, knowing that rivals were in attendance). Other details reveal some of the stereotypes that the Chinese, or “Celestials,” in nineteen-thirties slang, faced, including a bizarre court proceeding in which a white attorney insisted that the Chinese defendants be sworn in by burning paper and lopping off a rooster’s head.