Unfinished People

Nearly three million Jews came to America from Eastern Europe between 1880 and the outbreak of World War I. For the most part, they were young, single, unskilled, uneducated, and yet filled with hope of a new life in a new land. In Unfinished People, Ruth Gay fills in the rarely told story of the newcomers in New York in the 1920s and 1930s. Once past the first shock of entry, the young immigrants moved to their dream neighborhoods - in this case the Bronx - where they invented their own version of America. Reveling in the luxuries of steam heat and indoor plumbing, they rebuilt a familiar world of synagogues, schools, and stores, but with a difference. Using homely detail, Gay describes how they dared to become "up-to-date" Americans.

First sentence: At the height of the immigrant flood from Europe (1880-1920), when New York was the great mother port for immigrant ships, 17 million immigrants, three quarters of all those who came to the United States, were sluiced through the narrow gates of Ellis Island and Castle Garden, the two receiving stations in New York.

Year

1996

Language

English

Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

Editions

2

Pages

320

ISBN

9780393322408

Data source: Wikidata