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Presents first-hand accounts from the last surviving immigrants.
The definitive biography of musician Harry Chapin, a modern-day Woody Guthrie, selfless humanist, and poet laureate to cabdrivers, housewives, and commonfolk alike, written by a longtime friend and confidant. Chapin is known for his ballads and "story songs", among them his signature song, the hugely popular "Taxi". He died in an auto crash in 1981, just as his fame was burgeoning and his albums were selling out in record stores. Though the broader recognition due him has been late in coming, his music, his beliefs, and his social activism are now widely appreciated by increasing numbers of fans here and abroad.
Finding Martha is a true story about one man's search for his birthmother, their miraculous reunion and the visits that would transform their lives. In it, Peter Morton Coan writes about his experience growing up an only child who was adopted as an infant by an affluent New York Jewish family. When his retired adopting father, cleaning out his basement, shows him his original adoption papers and true identity, Peter begins the search to find his birthmother, Martha, a devout Christian woman raised in the Bible-belt backwoods of West Virginia and Tennessee. He eventually finds her nearly two years later in suburban Cincinnati. He's 42 years old and she's 64 when they meet for the first time o...
This book offers a balanced, poignant, and often moving portrait of America’s immigrants over more than a century. The author has organized the book by decades so that readers can easily find the time period most relevant to their experience or that of family members. The first part covers the Ellis Island era, the second part America’s new immigrants—from the closing of Ellis Island in 1955 to the present. Also included is a comprehensive appendix of statistics showing immigration by country and decade from 1890 to the present, a complete list of famous immigrants, and much more. This rewarding, engrossing volume documents the diverse mosaic of America in the words of the people from many lands, who for more than a century have made our country what it is today. It distills the larger, hot-topic issue of national immigration down to the personal level of the lives of those who actually lived it.
The Last Baby Boomer is Peter Morton Coan's tribute to his generation; a modern-day Bright Lights, Big City driven by the schizophrenic misadventures and underbellies of New York's publishing and culinary worlds, as the protagonist, in his search for meaning, accidentally reconnects with the great love of his childhood from Long Island - the Land of Baby Boom - where they once vowed to marry, raise children and be happy - but life had other ideas.
In this groundbreaking analysis of Supreme Court decision-making, Andrew Coan explains how judicial caseload shapes the course of American constitutional law and the role of the Court in American society. Compared with the vast machinery surrounding Congress and the president, the Supreme Court is a tiny institution that can resolve only a small fraction of the constitutional issues that arise in any given year. Rationing the Constitution shows that this simple yet frequently ignored fact is essential to understanding how the Supreme Court makes constitutional law. Due to the structural organization of the judiciary and certain widely shared professional norms, the capacity of the Supreme Co...
More than twelve million immigrants, many of them children, passed through Ellis Island's gates between 1892 and 1954. Children also came through the "Guardian of the Western Gate," the detention center on Angel Island in California that was designed to keep Chinese immigrants out of the United States. Based on the oral histories of fifty children who came to the United States before 1950, this book chronicles their American odyssey against the backdrop of World Wars I and II, the rise and fall of Hitler's Third Reich, and the hardships of the Great Depression. Ranging in age from four to sixteen years old, the children hailed from Northern, Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe; the Middle ...
From 1892 to 1954, Ellis Island processed 12 million immigrants. Produced in cooperation with the Ellis Island Research Foundation, "Ellis Island Interviews" collects the oral histories of more than 130 men and women from all socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. The stories of these last original surviving immigrants are enhanced by more than 60 photographs, many never before published.
What motivates so many people to take great risks to come to America's shores? This is a fascinating and profusely illustrated oral history of the true stories of immigrants told in their own words.
The popular image of Scotland is dominated by widely recognized elements of Celtic culture. But a significant non-Celtic influence on Scotland's history has been largely ignored for centuries? This book argues that much of Scotland's history and culture from 1100 forward is Jewish. The authors provide evidence that many of the national heroes, villains, rulers, nobles, traders, merchants, bishops, guild members, burgesses, and ministers of Scotland were of Jewish descent, their ancestors originating in France and Spain. Much of the traditional historical account of Scotland, it is proposed, rests on fundamental interpretive errors, perpetuated in order to affirm Scotland's identity as a Celtic, Christian society. A more accurate and profound understanding of Scottish history has thus been buried. The authors' wide-ranging research includes examination of census records, archaeological artifacts, castle carvings, cemetery inscriptions, religious seals, coinage, burgess and guild member rolls, noble genealogies, family crests, portraiture, and geographic place names.