Unfinished People
Eastern European Jews Encounter America

I really enjoyed this book. Both of my parents hail from NY, and they are 2nd generation American born Jews. The descriptions of street, school, and community life for this immigrant class really opened my eyes to the world my parents lived in. Ruth grew up in the Bronx same as my father, but about......more

Unique first-hand testimony of Jewish life in the early twentieth century, and how it adapted to the culture shock of young people leaving their traditional and insular lives in Eastern Europe early on for the modernity and economic opportunity of New York City. Has a lot to say about intergeneratio......more

Very informative book about the lives of immigrant Jews in the Bronx (and Brooklyn and the Lower East Side) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I hadn't realized how many of them were young--unaccompanied teenagers, and even children. Although the writing style was uneven and at ti......more

This is a sort of biography rather than a well organized history book. I generally prefer the more academic history style of book but this is still very good and compelling, and so very familiar to me.......more

I really enjoyed this book. It had a nice balance between factual information and entertaining details.......more