The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans as Told by Themselves: Expanded Edition

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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 920.073 EAN: 9780415925105 ISBN: 041592510X Label: Routledge Manufacturer: Routledge Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 312 Publication Date: 1999-12 Publisher: Routledge Studio: Routledge
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Editorial Reviews: from reviews of the first Routledge edition: "Entirely charming" Jonathan Yardley, *Washington Post* "A marvelous little book . . . . With no varnish or self-pity, . . . people who never achieved anything notable (except decency and dignity) tell the stories of their lives. A Chinese laundry-man, a Polish woman sweatshop worker, a farm wife--all considered themselves ordinary and all were extraordinary. Heroes come in a lot of funny shapes." Molly Ivins, *Ms Magazine* "To see the Florida seabed through a Conch sponge fisherman's water glass is as rich and strange as to sit in a Lithuanian log house at the turn of the century and listen, with a boy's ears, to an old shoemaker reading subversive literature... The voices that emerge [are] as vivid as the scratchings of an Edison cylinder." Edmund Morris, The New Yorker "The so-called undistinguished Americans generally speak in their own words; at times their writing is rough-hewn, even mundane, but informed with the rousing emotions of immigrants trying to succeed in a new land, of native-born Americans struggling against the prejudices of their fellow countrymen. The book recreates a bygone era by serving up the stuff of day-to-day life." *Publishers Weekly* Hamilton Holt, editor of The Independent, collected these touching autobiographies of ordinary people--new immigrants and sharecroppers, cooks and fishermen, women and men working in sweatshops, in the city, and on the land. First published in 1906, and reissued a decade ago, this new edition of Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans is expanded to include lives Holt did not include in his original selection, as well as a new preface by Werner Sollors.
Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: More! Comment: I hope this is one of many books just like this one! Heart-warming stories, you'll wish you'd known the person first-hand. I'm actually buying copies of this book for various friends that think the only history they need to know is on the History Channel! Well-written. Customer Rating: Summary: The threads that bind us as Americans Comment: Each story is engaging and interesting. The stories are about urban and rural life. The most wonderful aspect of these acccounts are how much in common we have as human beings and immigrants. The same struggles and hardships are experienced regardless of ethnicity, an eye opening read. Customer Rating: Summary: You can't say enough nice about this book..... Comment: I'm not one of the sort of people who falls often for heart warming. I'm too bitter, too jaded... too educated to be able to gush openly about kindly regard for many things. This book, though, deserves that kind of praise. As you could gather from the blurbs from magazines, this is a hundred year old book that seeks to illustrate the lives of typical, everyday (not to say uninteresting) Americans. The book is short; it's stories are realistic. Thus, it gives great insight into our collective 'ancestry': a voice to the long-dead. I'm inclined to think that every time I mentally want to destroy America, in this book, again, could be found renewed hope and exploration. In this book one can find the stories of Lithuanians who set out to cross the ocean, of free black women finding for the first time life in a segregated south, of Greek pushcart workers who end up with $50,000 in the bank. More or less, these are the voices that give our community continuity.... and, well, I'm starting to ramble and make little sense.... Just read the book.... Customer Rating: Summary: especially charming, direct, informative Comment: This book should be more widely available. I find it full of the kind of detail about peoples' lives (in this case, immigrants to the United States) that are cogent, relevant, and delivered with considerable charm and lack of artifice. Everyone to whom I have given a copy of this book has raved about it. More Reviews