Immigration Books

This is a first rate study of the youngsters who came to the United States as refugees from the Nazis, either with their parents or sent here by themselves. It gives a factual account of numerous characteristics of that near-cohort that reveals this group to have been notably more successful than their American-born counterparts. The study then turns to attempt a complex explanation of that success--teaching the reader a good deal about the tension between what is brought to America from elsewhere and the impact of America on the arrivals. While What Happened to the Children Who Fled Nazi Persecution is a carefully wrought social science study--with all the trimmings, including a zillion footnotes--it is also written exceedingly well and will reward those who lack the patience for sociological niceties and will skip them. Skip or not, I would call this a minor social sciene classic. Finally, I must conclude by avowing that in 1939, I arrived in the United States from Germany as a Jewish refugee and that I find much about me in this book. --Rudolph H. Weingartner

Where the Grass is Greener contains interviews with women from all over the world who have chosen, for one reason or another, to call Ireland home.

An interesting book on the sociology of white folks in Africa, written in 1962 or so. That immediate "post-colonial" time is one that people never talk about, and is therefore interesting. The authors (two white dudes connected with Rhodesia) pointed out many of the better aspects of having whitey around in Africa, such as technology, a functioning economy, and a non militaristic system of government. It also gives some of the history of these countries; I found the stories of the Afrikan Trekkers to be fascinating, and greatly analagous in time and situation to that of American pioneers. South Africa and Rhodesia are the only ones people think of as presently containing people of european descent, but many others, such as the Congo, Angola, Guinea, Mocambique, Ruanda, and various others that no longer exist (Tanganyika, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland) had a substantial population of whites. Many african nations, of course, had virtually no European contact.

Many of the things they predicted came to pass, such as Angolan revolt, tribal warfare, militarization of previously parliamentary republics, bloody nationalism (associated with a growing black middle class) and so on. Interesting to read some talking heads who got it right in their day. It would be even more interesting to draw some parallels between the things these guys predicted and people who are making predictions now: one could make some money based on their predictions if you picked a winner. These dudes seemed to be singularly hard-nosed, open-minded (in that they certainly saw the african side of things as well as the white settlers viewpoint; no demonization at all) and very well educated. I think the reason people don't talk much about this era is that the consequences of "liberal" attitudes in africa were fairly horrific. Compare colonial africa to non colonial africa; the colonial nations remain better off.

While it would be easy for the present-day chest-beaters to ascribe african misery to the horrors of "imperialism" if you don't know any of the history, it is impossible to do so if you know about it. Imperialism was the best thing which ever happened to Africa. It's a shame, for africans sake, that imperialism did not put a dent in Africa sooner: the continent as a whole would have been better off.

Amusingly, I wrote all of the above before the 9/11/01. Most of the Middle Eastern nations, despite the incoherent blubberings of people like Edward Said and the professional whining classes, were never subject to European imperialism -and certainly weren't subject to european colonialism. While the French and British administered parts of the Middle East after destroying the Ottoman Empire in WW-1, those areas were never colonized or administered in an Imperialist manner by europeans. The idea of empire and colonies was effectively dead by then; killed by people like Woodrow Wilson. Middle eastern countries might have been better off had this happened. Certainly the middle east would have been better off had it been returned to Turkey after the reforms of Attaturk.

This book is a valuable cultural artifact of a turning point in african and human history. Read it not to be convinced of some Kipling-esque bosh, but to understand the world as it is.

At first it may seem that the book is about Comparative Immigration Politics: after all, the main subject of the work is postwar immigration to the UK. That is only one side of the story. The most interesting part is the criteria by which British officials were desiding what race and skin color potential immigrants could ("should") have, and what could ("should") not.

One begings to think about the U.S. and its racial and ethnic preferences it used to have in its immigration policies. Did you think the U.S. was alone in its racial preferences? Read the book then!

Very well-researched and written. Full of interesting perspectives on a very contemporary issue. Provides great historical perspective on the current frenzied national debate.

CITATION FOR WAYNE S. VUCINICH BOOK PRIZE for an outstanding monograph in Russian, Eurasian, or East European studies in any discipline of the humanities co-funded by AAASS and the Center for Russian and East European Studies at Stanford University awarded by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS)

This study offers a history of the refugee population from the western borderlands that swamped the administration and inhabitants of central Russia during the Great War. Adducing an impressive array of archival funds and contemporary accounts about and by the refugees themselves, Gatrell traces the story of the people displaced, by German and Russian forces alike, from the ethnically and religiously diverse territories of western Russia. He also considers the perspective of those charged with accommodating them: overburdened bureaucrats, charitable societies, and everyday townspeople and peasants in whose midst the refugees settled. Gatrell draws on theoretical perspectives, ranging from the work of Michel Foucault to recent studies of refugees in the late twentieth century, to examine the various ways in which refugeedom evolved as a set of discourses incorporating gender and nationhood, among other categories. The resulting study lends yet more depth and nuance to our understanding of the autocracy's unraveling, as well as to our understanding of the successor states that emerged from its wreckage. Equally, Gatrell makes a signal contribution to a growing literature on a phenomenon that has became tragically pervasive in the twentieth century, from Russia to India to Rwanda to the Balkans. This highly original account combines exemplary empirical research with the judicious application of diverse methods to explore the far-reaching ramifications of "a whole empire walking."

HONOURABLE MENTION John E. Malmstad, Professor of Slavic Languages, Harvard University and Nikolay Bogomolov, Professor of Russian Literature, University of Moscow for: Mikhail Kuzmin: A Life in Art published by Harvard University Press

This collaborative study is a result of a sustained interest in one of the seminal figures of Russian Modernism, Mikhail Kuzmin, that spans the last twenty-five year period in Russian Studies. The slow progress of research and publications, first of John Malmstad (1977), followed by subsequent collaboration with Nikolai Bogomolov (1996, 1999), reflects the widening possibilities in the research of pre-revolutionary modernism that has become possible since perestroika and the gradual availability of archival materials.

The collaboration of two major scholars of Russian modernism has finally produced an authoritative biography of Mikhail Kuzmin, one of the most versatile artists of the so-called Silver Age, whose homosexuality (for long unmentionable in either Russian or western scholarship) made the story of his life particularly challenging. It also made the story dependent on the writer's personal diaries, unavailable until the eighties. Indeed, the painstakingly gathered new information enables the authors of this magisterial study to fill in many lacunae in the chronology of Kuzmin's life and work, and also to document more precisely his complex relationships to prominent contemporary writers and artists of his time. The book is an invaluable contribution to the greater context of pre-revolutionary modernism and avant-garde in Russsian culture, whose history still remains to be written. And since Kuzmin died in 1936, the biography spans the years following the revolution and the Stalinist era, shedding new light on cultural politics of this turbulent period.

(The award was presented on November 11, 2000 at the AAASS 32nd National Convention in Denver, Colorado).

Help to see the financial pros and cons of immigration and the impact in United States. I used as a reference.

In my interviews with Beti Rozen, she has told me that she strives to make her stories as much for adults as for children. She has succeeded magnificently! Her stories are deeply representational, philosophical, thought-provoking, and fun! As you read her books to your children(which I hope many parents will) you will be able to pass along your enjoyment of the story to your child. She also collaborates with some of Brazil's greatest illustrators for the most breathtaking results. If all this weren't enough, these books are printed on the finest quality material for the best possible presentation and appearance. All of Beti Rozen's books are highly recommended for children of all ages(adults too!).
In the story, Without Words, it is the talent of the main character, Luiz, to express himself by drawing pictures from which we get the title. The story, itself, is expressed through Beti Rozen's words with her great talent for this genre. The illustrations are also fantastic. Everyone will love this book!

The back cover tells us that Charles Clark spent some years as a deckhand in the British Merchant Navy before embarking on his career as a research chemist. This background, together with his obvious skills as a different kind of researcher, is clearly evident in the expertise shown in the writing of an engrossing book.

We are introduced to the main story by way of fascinating vignettes of sailors cast adrift and eventually forced to resort to cannibalism. Then on to the Cospatrick, a three-masted barque which sailed from Britain for New Zealand in 1874.
Carrying a general cargo which included 6,000 gallons of spirits, the Cospatrick had 429 emigrants on board in addition to a crew of 44 and 4 passengers, when it caught fire and sank in the South Atlantic. The account of the fire, the desperate battle to save the ship, the panic and confusion as boats were lowered, are all graphically retold. Nearly 500 people died. In fact, there were only three survivors, three men who were later traumatised even further by the public exposure of their cannibalism.

The book is also very informative regarding the danger of life at sea generally in the 19th century. I was stunned, for example, to see an 1873 Board of Trade wreck chart reproduced that shows "Locations of the approximately 800 ship casualties that occurred on and around the coast of Britain during the first six months of 1873." (Yes, that really is 800!)

There are copious end-notes, six appendices and a good index. 'Women and Children Last' will be of interest to most general readers and deserves a permanent place in the library of any centre of maritime studies. I wish I'd had it when I was teaching English at the Portuguese Naval Academy. My students, I am sure, would have found it fascinating.

For many persons concerned with politics, citizenship in general, and women's citizenship in particular, has appeared as a contested and challenging concept. This book is a valuable contribution to this debate. The Authors of the several essays collected in the volume attempt to situate the concept of citizenship both historically and theoretically, focusing on its problems and limitations -most of them revealed by the effort to make it more inclusive, so as to encompass issues as gender and ethnicity. In brief, the challenges posed by "difference". The book also aims to make proposals to reconceptualize the idea of citizenship in a non-sexist, non-racist and non-westocentric way, and it offers several ways to think about it. For anyone interested in these issues, it will probably result an interesting book.