| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York. By Timothy J. Gilfoyle. (New York: Norton, 2006. xviii, 460 pp. $27.95, ISBN 978-0-393-06190-1.)

George Washington Appo was a pickpocket, con artist, actor, opium addict, snitch, and frequent prisoner. Appo made no important discoveries nor did he found any great enterprises; he cannot even be considered one of Eric Hobsbawm's "primitive rebels," prefiguring a strain of political resistance through his banditry. George Appo lived and died a minor criminal. So the first question that comes to mind when reading A Pickpocket's Tale is, Why should anyone, much less a historian, care about someone like Appo? In his painstakingly researched yet lively biography, Timothy J. Gilfoyle provides a convincing answer: Appo himself may have been insignificant, but he offers a valuable window into the shadowy world of crime and punishment in nineteenth-century New York.

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