Currently reading
400 Years Of Freethought
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version
Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson
The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America
The Uprooted
Handlin’s “history of immigration is a history of alienation and its consequences.” But he never mentions anyone in particular. “I have not found it in the nature of this work to give its pages the usual historical documentation,” he says. Freed from any obligation to support his generalizations with the experiences (much less the voices) of real people, Handlin paints a picture of superstitious, ignorant peasants who are too thick to understand the new society they find in America. They huddle together in ghettos until they are told by their social betters that they must become American; and then they discover the depth of their alienation -- they will never belong, and they can never go home. Mario Puzo had more insights to share than Handlin, and this won the Pulitzer for history because Handlin was a rock-star historian. A low moment for the profession.
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