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American Passage: The History Of Ellis Island (2009)

by Vincent J. Cannato(Favorite Author)

3.72 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0060742739 (ISBN13: 9780060742737)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Harper

review 1: The narrator made this book incredibly boring. Well, it's not entirely his fault. He didn't have great material to work with to start. This book lacks focus. Instead of there being a unifying theme, the author seems to delight in telling the tales of every rejected immigrant for which he has primary source data. At the same time, he repeatedly reminds the reader that only a small percentage of immigrants were turned away. It would be difficult to discern that from his narrative. His chronology also suffers from a lack of focus. He seems to love forward generally through the book but often flits back and forth to whatever time frame suits his fancy. I do not recommend this book. Hopefully someone with a better grasp of historiography has written a history of Ellis Island an... mored given it the treatment it deserves.
review 2: Vincent Cannato, descendant of Italian immigrants who passed through the notorious immigration station in New York, traces the history of the site through the nineteenth and early twentieth century. I visited Ellis Island twice as a child, but was never able to imagine what it must have been like to arrive there. I�ve only ever known it as a museum rather than the nightmarish welcome to America that it must have been in its day, and I found that this book helped to bring that into focus for me. If you�re looking for the stories of the immigrants themselves, then this probably isn�t the best book for you. It devotes a lot of attention to political wrangling over federal immigration policies, which is interesting if a little long-winded. less

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