Reviews
Bayor (Neighbors in Conflict), former president of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, fills his quick-moving narrative with dozens of oral and written accounts of those who experienced the 'Island of Hope, Island of Tears' in their quest for the American dream.
This slim volume is well researched... Students will find this a useful addition to their bibliography.
In elegant prose in 142 pages (a remarkable achievement), Bayor (emer., Georgia Institute of Technology) includes painful and positive experiences of immigrants and employees on Ellis and Angel Islands, stories representing 20 million new Americans between 1892 and 1924, and those rejected for entry... Highly recommended.
Bound to pique students' curiosity and provoke questions about both immigration law and history, Encountering Ellis Island promises to be a useful introductory text that undergraduate students will find engaging and accessible.
Encountering Ellis Island is a great book...[that] does a great job synthesizing historiography and combining it with primary sources, especially memoirs and oral histories.
Encountering Ellis Island is an accessible, succinct, and easy-to-read book. It speaks to several fields of study and can easily be adopted in courses focusing on U.S. immigration history and the immigrant experience and those dealing with progressivism, the Gilded Age, and the social and cultural history of the United States in the twentieth century.
Book Details
Preface
Prologue
1. How (and Why) Immigrants Traveled to America
2. How Immigrants Were Processed
3. How Newcomers Dealt with Delays and Coped with Detainment or Rejection
4. How the Immigration Staff and
Preface
Prologue
1. How (and Why) Immigrants Traveled to America
2. How Immigrants Were Processed
3. How Newcomers Dealt with Delays and Coped with Detainment or Rejection
4. How the Immigration Staff and Others Viewed Their Work
5. How Immigrants Responded to Entering America and Changed the System
Epilogue
Notes
Selected Further Reading
Index