Review by Choice Review
In this sprawling but engaging volume, historian Anbinder (George Washington Univ.) largely delivers on the challenge of fully surveying the history of immigration to New York City, a subject never addressed to this extent. Unlike many histories of New York immigration, this book begins with early Dutch settlement and British colonial years before moving to more familiar territory. Hampered by a paucity of sources, the early chapters lack the fast-paced narrative found in the rest of the book, where the story of immigration in the creation of the modern metropolis comes fully alive. Anbinder periodically employs more intimate personal stories to add life to an occasionally broadly drawn account. The heart of the book arrives in chapters on the 19th and 20th centuries, when masses of immigrants repeated and remade patterns of settlement, work, and challenges of previous generations of newcomers. Readers unfamiliar with the many neighborhoods of New York's boroughs are aided by helpful maps. While the role of religion in immigrant communities seems underappreciated, recurring outbreaks of anti-immigrant resistance get notable attention. Because immigration to New York is ongoing, the end of the book naturally merges with current issues, many of which mirror earlier struggles. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Most levels/libraries. --Charles K. Piehl, Minnesota State University, Mankato
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
ROGUE HEROES: The History of the SAS, Britain's Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War, by Ben Macintyre. (Crown, $28.) An entertaining history of the S.A.S. from its North African desert origins. CITY OF DREAMS: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York, by Tyler Anbinder. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $35.) A richly textured guide to the past of the nation's chief immigrant city. THE MAN WHO KNEW: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan, by Sebastian Mallaby. (Penguin Press, $40.) This thorough account of the former Fed chairman's rise depicts him as political to a fault. THE WORD DETECTIVE: Searching for the Meaning of It All at the Oxford English Dictionary, by John Simpson. (Basic Books, $27.99.) From a former chief editor of the O.E.D., a charmingly frank account of a career dedicated to lexicography. DO NOT SAY WE HAVE NOTHING, by Madeleine Thien. (Norton, $26.95.) A Chinese-Canadian professor probes the mystery of her father's life amid upheavals in China in this ambitious novel. AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY: A Love Story, by John Kaag. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) Kaag engages in a spirited lover's quarrel with the individualism of our national thought. THE MOTHERS, by Brit Bennett. (Riverhead, $26.) Three young people come of age in a black community in Southern California in this complex, ferociously moving debut novel. THE MORTIFICATIONS, by Derek Palacio. (Tim Duggan, $27.) This sweeping debut novel limns the exile and return of a Cuban-American family. RICH AND PRETTY, by Rumaan Alam. (Ecco/ HarperCollins, $25.99.) An astute debut novel about two women's long but fraying friendship. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 13, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* New York City is unique, and it was made that, in large part, by being a city of immigrants. There were more immigrants living in New York in 1950 than the full population in all but two other American cities. This superb book may not quite live up to its subtitle (it emphasizes only the largest immigrant group in each era), but it is full of fascinating, rock-solid history and provides compelling texture behind the larger trends. Although it starts with conflicts between the English and Dutch, it quickly goes on to the huge German (John Jacob Astor and others) and Irish immigrations (many, especially after the potato blight began in 1847). Though groups are well handled in the aggregate, Anbinder also covers important individuals (Scotsman Cadwallader Colden, Samuel Gompers, the Steinways, and many lesser others). His coverage of the Italians and his own precursors, the Jews, is balanced and excellent. Among the book's most powerful sections are those dealing with the horrendous living conditions for most immigrants in New York and the even-more-horrific transatlantic journey. Along with immigration, of course, came nativism, Know Nothing-ism, and restrictions of multiple kinds all addressed thoroughly. The well-chosen photographs help illustrate the fine narrative, as do the maps and charts.--Levine, Mark Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Anbinder (Five Points), a professor of history at George Washington University, traces the history of New York City's immigrant groups from the earliest Dutch settlers to the waves of Caribbean and Chinese immigrants who have more recently made their mark on the city, spinning a tale of tragedy and triumph that comes with political teeth. Anbinder adeptly shows that the same fears that dominate 21st-century debates on immigration were alive and well in earlier eras, arguing persuasively that 19th-century immigrant communities were far more insular and impregnable than their present-day counterparts. In fact, so discrete were these ethnic neighborhoods that a Jew leaving the familiar confines of the Lower East Side or an Italian venturing north of Washington Square was said to be "going to America." Anbinder is a master at taking a history with which many readers will be familiar-tenement houses, temperance societies, slums-and making it new, strange, and heartbreakingly vivid. The stories of individuals, including those of the entrepreneurial Steinway brothers and the tragic poet Pasquale D'Angelo, are undeniably compelling, but it's Anbinder's stunning image of New York as a true city of immigrants that captures the imagination. Agent: Jill Grinberg, Jill Grinberg Literary. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Before 1875, there were no restrictions on U.S. immigration. Those arriving in New York were checked for medical conditions and quarantined if necessary but otherwise entered the city to find livelihoods and communities, or to move West. -Historian Anbinder (Five Points) focuses on certain periods of New York's immigration history, selecting eras with rich histories that helped build the city's multicultural landscape. Beginning with the founding of New Amsterdam as a Dutch colony in the 1700s, Anbinder explains the transition to English rule as the territory became known as New York. Even as early as 1700, real estate costs could be exorbitant, with many residents wanting to live in "desirable" areas. Anbinder's research is thorough and thoughtful; he doesn't gloss over difficulties, ethnic clashes, racism, slavery, or poverty. Rather, he explores the challenges of assimilation and what gets lost in the process of generations becoming "Americanized" through stories of prominent New Yorkers and more typical immigrant experiences. The author covers a lot of ground in readable and accessible prose that captures how the United States has become a nation of multifaceted cultures. VERDICT Essential for civic-minded readers, history buffs, fans of New York, and public and academic libraries.-Candice Kail, Columbia Univ. Libs., New York © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
From the Dutch to the British, featuring a concentration on the waves of Irish and German in the late 19th century, this thoroughgoing work offers a host of immigrant sagas that were integral to the creation of the New York City cauldron. Proceeding with grand themes such as Anglicization, War, Liberty, and Refuge, Anbinder (History/George Washington Univ.;nbsp;Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum, 2001, etc.) impressively conveys the sense of a city truly forged by the people who were determined to live and work there. He uses personal storiese.g., by those who made the arduous ocean crossing under horrendous conditionsas well as contemporary maps that illustrate the delineation of neighborhoods by ethnicity, diagrams of the early tenement flats, and charts that record the incredible fluctuating numbers. For example, 950,000 Irish immigrants arrived in New York during the great famine years of the mid-1840s-1850s. Anbinder concentrates on the nitty-gritty details of these difficult early lives in America: their arrival at the immigration and inspection station, harassment by runners who tried to swindle them out of their money and luggage, groupings into neighborhoods and wards, overcrowded living conditions in squalid tenement buildings inhabited by most of the poorest new arrivals, and the kinds of jobs the unskilled gravitated toward, including household servants, manual laborers, street peddlers, and grocers. The author also examines the political proclivities of the newcomerse.g., the support of the crooked Tweed Ring, the Irish menace, and recalcitrant Democrats who kept the vote from African-Americans. On the other hand, the tension between immigrants and nativists led to the rise of the Know Nothing party and the increasing restrictions on immigration, especially against the Chinese. Furthermore, Anbinder gives plenty of room for the stories of the Jews, Italians, African-Americans, Dominicans, and others. An endlessly fascinating kaleidoscope of American history. A fantastic historical resource. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
