Purchase
The History of Ellis Island
Harper
June 2009
On Sale: June 9, 2009
496 pages
ISBN: 0060742739
EAN: 9780060742737
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
For most of New York's early history, Ellis Island had been
an obscure little island that barely held itself above high
tide. Today the small island stands alongside Plymouth Rock
in our nation's founding mythology as the place where many
of our ancestors first touched American soil. Ellis Island's
heyday—from 1892 to 1924—coincided with one of the greatest
mass movements of individuals the world has ever seen, with
some twelve million immigrants inspected at its gates. In
American Passage, Vincent J. Cannato masterfully illuminates
the story of Ellis Island from the days when it hosted
pirate hangings witnessed by thousands of New Yorkers in the
nineteenth century to the turn of the twentieth century when
massive migrations sparked fierce debate and hopeful new
immigrants often encountered corruption, harsh conditions,
and political scheming. American Passage captures a time and a place unparalleled in
American immigration and history, and articulates the
dramatic and bittersweet accounts of the immigrants,
officials, interpreters, and social reformers who all play
an important role in Ellis Island's chronicle. Cannato
traces the politics, prejudices, and ideologies that
surrounded the great immigration debate, to the shift from
immigration to detention of aliens during World War II and
the Cold War, all the way to the rebirth of the island as a
national monument. Long after Ellis Island ceased to be the
nation's preeminent immigrant inspection station, the
debates that once swirled around it are still relevant to
Americans a century later. In this sweeping, often heart-wrenching epic, Cannato
reveals that the history of Ellis Island is ultimately the
story of what it means to be an American.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
| 
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy