Reddit reviews The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream

I only got in to Non fiction recently, been a fiction fan all my life...but found some awesome stuff that I wanna name-drop because I'm sure others will list my favorite fantasy titles.

• • The Snakehead - MY FAVORITE! All about the human smuggling (they went willingly so that separates it from human trafficking) of the recent Fujian immigrants to NY's Chinatown. What's crazy is how this all happened in the late 80s, 1990s, and in to the 2000's. The book reads like an action movie, and you never want to put it down. I extra enjoyed it because: (A) I grew up right by all of this and never realized any of this was happening (B) Gangster stories are awesome! Bonus.....the new Scorcese movie ("Revenge of the Green Dragons") is very reminiscent of Snakehead, at least based off the preview. But I think it deals more with the gangster aspect than the human smuggling aspect, which are intertwined in Snakehead but not entirely the same thing...so maybe it won't be related at all...
    
    

• All the Way Down; the Violent Underworld of Street Gangs - Another gangster book, another NEW YORK gangster book because I love reading about my area....I fully admit my bias. This is about the kid gangs in Gowanus, Brooklyn...which is now incredibly gentrified and fairly unrecognizable. It's written by this guy who was supposed to help turn kids in that area away from gangbanging. He has a lot of very interesting insight on them and their motivations, too.
  
  Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account, Born to Run, and the Omnivore's Dilemma were a few other non-fics that changed my life and really made me think.

https://www.amazon.com/Snakehead-Chinatown-Underworld-American-Dream/dp/0307279278/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1506111238&sr=8-2&keywords=snakehead

should give this a read, details how people from Asia try very hard to come to USA.

I had the same New Year's resolution a few years ago and ended up reading 65 books that year. I ran out of books I wanted to read and scrambled to find more. So you'll have weeks you'll read anything you can get your hands on which can be hit or miss, but I liked being taken out of my normal, nonfiction, reading patterns.

Here are a few If my favorites:

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

Demon In The Freezer by Richard Preston

The Snakehead by Patrick Keefe

John Dies At The End by David Wong

Into Thin Air by John Krakauer

Death's Acre by Dr. Bill Bass

Biohazard by Ken Alibek

My parents owned Chinese buffets. I was an indentured servant. Can confirm.

No, in all seriousness, it's super simplistic to think of them as indentured servant. They're just heavily in debt(by choice) and need to work their asses off to pay off their debt pronto. It ain't cheap to come to America. You can't be dumb and lazy to be here. Life ain't easy for Chinese restaurant workers with limited English skill.

You are serious about learning more, pick up this book from library. But with the amount of ignorance I saw on daily basis on this sub, I'm not optimistic people would even bother.