Jewish Immigrants and American Capitalism, 1880-1920: From Caste to Class (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780521730235)

Eli Lederhendler's Jewish Immigrants and American Capitalism, 1880-1920: From Caste to Class reexamines the immigration of Russian Jews to the United States around the turn of the 20th century - a group that accounted for 10 to 15 percent of immigrants to the United States between 1899 and 1920 - challenging and revising common assumptions concerning the ease of their initial adaptation and image as a "model" immigrant minority. Lederhendler demonstrates that the characteristics for which Jewish immigrants are commonly known - their industriousness, "middle-class" domestic habits, and political sympathy for the working class - were, in fact, developed in response to their new situation in the United States. This experience realigned Jewish social values and restored to these immigrants a sense of status, honor, and a novel kind of social belonging, and with it the "social capital" needed to establish a community quite different from the ones they came from.

Author: Eli Lederhendler
ISBN-10: 0521730236
ISBN-13: 9780521730235
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 03/02/2009
Pages: 248
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.80h x 5.90w x 0.60d

Review Citation(s):
Chronicle of Higher Education 05/29/2009 pg. 17
Choice 06/01/2010