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Title details for The Long Way Home by David Laskin - Available

The Long Way Home

An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War

by David Laskin
Erik Synnestvedt
Audiobook
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1 of 1 copy available
The United States has always been a nation of immigrants—never more so than in 1917 when the nation entered the First World War. Of the 2.5 million soldiers who fought with U.S. armed forces in the trenches of France and Belgium, some half a million—nearly one out of every five men—were immigrants. In The Long Way Home, David Laskin, author of the prizewinning history The Children's Blizzard, tells the stories of twelve of these immigrant heroes. Starting with their childhoods in Europe, Laskin unfolds the saga of their journeys to Ellis Island, their struggles to start over in the land of opportunity, and the ordeal of their return to Europe in uniform to fight—and win—a war that had already killed tens of millions.


Three of these soldiers died on the battlefield; two won the Congressional Medal of Honor; all were transformed forever by their experiences in combat. It is a transformation that continues to be felt in the pride and pain and cherished memories of immigrant families that have long since assimilated.


In tracing the lives of these twelve men, Laskin tells the story of an immigrant generation—a generation that streamed into this country in unprecedented numbers around the turn of the last century, that sweated to support their families through back-breaking physical labor, and that fought loyally for their adopted country on the battlefields of Belleau Wood, Soissons, St. Mihiel, and the Argonne forest.


Based on stories, letters, and diaries passed on by descendants—as well as Laskin's personal interviews with two foreign-born Doughboys who were still alive at the time he was researching the book, The Long Way Home is a reverent work of history and a deeply moving evocation of the dreams and sacrifice at the heart of the American experience.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 23, 2010

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400194506
      • File size: 385149 KB
      • Duration: 13:22:23

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 25, 2010
      At the height of America’s involvement in the Great War, nearly one in five of the 4.7 million Americans in uniform had been born overseas. Laskin (The Children’s Blizzard
      ) chronicles the lives of 12 of these men who immigrated from Europe. The soldiers’ loyalty and pride in serving won them and their families the status of “real” Americans. Meyer Epstein, a Russian-Jewish plumber from New York’s Lower East Side, who had been living by his wits and muscle, was eventually awarded four Bronze Stars; marching with the American army through France was not much worse than his youth hauling junk around the shtetls of the Pale of Settlement with a horse and cart. Charming and fastidious Tony Pierro, a southern Italian gardener, drove horse-drawn supply wagons to and from the front in France, bringing munitions in and carting corpses out. Andrew Christofferson, drafted from his Montana homestead, was hungrier in the trenches in France than he’d been as a poor boy in Norway. This quietly absorbing glimpse of some of the brave soldiers who helped win WWI will appeal to history buffs. 16 pages of photos.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      The author recounts the personal histories of 12 immigrants, men who epitomize what a generation of pre-WWI immigrants endured, and how they changed in their journeys from immigrant to soldier to citizen. The stories of enduring ocean crossings, passing through Ellis Island, and trying to find work pull at the heartstrings. In the audio production, one finds frequent shifts among the dozen individuals who recount their memories, a structure that is difficult to follow in audio. Narrator Erik Synnestvedt is unable to make the accounts sound as if they come from 12 men rather than one. With annoying predictability, he isolates the short sentences from one other with long pauses. He does, however, speak clearly and enunciate well. J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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