The Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco's Chinatown. by Dillon, Richard H - 1962.

New York:: Coward-McCann, 1962.. 1st Edition.. Hardbound . BINDING/CONDITION: red cloth with gilt; bookplate, the spine is very slightly slanted otherwise a Very Good book, with a Good+ dust jacket; publisher's price on the jacket flap is intact.. 8vo (about 8.5 inches tall) . Bibliography. Black endpapers. Description: Includes a section of black and white plates with historic photographs and contemporary illustrations. The publisher's blurb reads: ''The author spirits the reader into a world as vanished as Pompeii. It is a world in which the hair is worn in a queue to the waist, in which the voluminous sleeve of silken garment hides a razor-sharp weapon. It is a world of twenty or more men for every woman, and where many men in desperation seek out the opium pipe. Most of all it is the world of the famed and feared tongs. Learn how they came to be, what they actually were, and why the worst features of these organizations took root and flourished just south of the Golden Gate. Read a story of mayhem, assassination, extortion, gambling, prostitution, drugs, blackmail, the vendetta, and the pay-out -- hatchet-man style, so flagrant that nothing short of an earthquake could curb it.''