The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War [Hardcover]

David Laskin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 16, 2010

From the author of The Children's Blizzard comes an epic story of the sacrifice and service of an immigrant generation.

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, one-third of the nation's population had been born overseas or had a parent who was an immigrant. At the peak of U.S. involvement in the war, nearly one in five American soldiers was foreign-born. Many of these immigrant soldiers—most of whom had been drafted—knew little of America outside of tight-knit ghettos and backbreaking labor. Yet World War I would change their lives and ultimately reshape the nation itself. Italians, Jews, Poles, Norwegians, Slovaks, Russians, and Irishmen entered the army as aliens and returned as Americans, often as heroes.

In The Long Way Home, award-winning writer David Laskin traces the lives of a dozen men, eleven of whom left their childhood homes in Europe, journeyed through Ellis Island, and started over in a strange land. After detailing the daily realities of immigrant life in the factories, farms, mines, and cities of a rapidly growing nation, Laskin tells the heartbreaking stories of how these men—both conscripts and volunteers—joined the army, were swept into the ordeal of boot camp, and endured the month of hell that ended the war at the Argonne, where they truly became Americans. Those who survived were profoundly altered—and their experiences would shape the lives of their families as well.

Epic, inspiring, and masterfully written, The Long Way Home is the unforgettable true story of the Great War, the world it remade, and the men who fought for a country not of their birth, but which held the hope and opportunity of a better way of life.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

This is an engrossing and moving story of 12 men, all of them immigrants to the U.S., who were transformed by their brief but intense experiences as soldiers in WWI. They included Italians, Poles, Scandinavians, Slovaks, Jews, and Irishmen. Most of them did not relish military service, and some of them fled their homelands to avoid conscription. Before they were drafted or enlisted in the U.S. military, few of them understood or cared about the issues that had torn apart a Europe that they had left behind. These men were not atypical, since an estimated 20 percent of U.S. military draftees were foreign born. Laskin tells their individual stories with eloquence and feeling while avoiding cheap sentimentality As he traces their paths from bootcamp to combat in France, one can see their gradual merging with their fellow soldiers into a true “band of brothers.” This is a superb chronicle that illustrates how some young men were transformed into Americans. --Jay Freeman

Review

"In this compelling book, Laskin...follows the lives of 12 American doughboys who had been born in Europe and then returned there to fight for their adopted country in World War I. It's an imaginative concept..." --The Washington Post

"Laskin tells [the] individual stories with eloquence and feeling....This is a superb chronicle that illustrates how some young men were transformed into Americans." --Booklist

“Riveting. . . . With the epic history of the Great War as his backdrop, Laskin has vividly brought these extraordinary, colorful men to life and created, overall, an absolute masterpiece.” (Andrew Carroll, editor of War Letters and Behind the Lines
“David Laskin’s latest, The Long Way Home, reads with the heart-quickening pace of a novel as he focuses his gaze on a band of real-life characters who emigrated to the United States in the years just before World War I.” (The Minneapolis Star Tribune )

“Moving, revealing, and lovingly researched, this book is a must read, and a great read, for any of us whose forebears came from overseas-meaning just about all of us.” (Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City )

“David Laskin’s The Long Way Home is a brilliant blending of social analysis and personal narrative, which recovers the experience of a ‘lost generation’—the immigrant ‘greenhorns’ who became Americans through service on the battlefields of World War I.” (Richard Slotkin, author of Gunfighter Nation )

“A riveting remembrance of the Great War by a master writer. David Laskin, by homing in on the lives of a dozen immigrants to Ellis Island, is able to tell a grand American saga about the true cost of democracy. All around a deeply compelling narrative.” (Douglas Brinkley, author of The Wilderness Warrior )

“Laskin’s tracing of young immigrants, figuratively and literally, from Ellis Island to the trenches of World War I France blends moving personal stories, sociology, culture and military history. The result is a marvelous evocation of what it means to become an American and the many paths to that end.” (Joseph Persico, author of Eleven Month, Eleven Day, Eleventh Hour )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1St Edition edition (March 16, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061233331
• ISBN-13: 978-0061233333
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #267,388 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Laskin was born in New York in 1953 and educated at Harvard College and New College, Oxford. For the past twenty-five years, Laskin has written books and articles on a wide range of subjects including history, weather, travel, gardens and the natural world. His most recent book, The Children's Blizzard, won the Washington State Book Award and the Midwest Booksellers' Choice Award for Nonfiction. Laskin's other titles include Braving the Elements: The Stormy History of American Weather, Partisans: Marriage, Politics and Betrayal Among the New York Intellectuals, A Common Life: Four Generations of American Literary Friendship and Influence, and Artists in their Gardens (co-authored with Valerie Easton). A frequent contributor to The New York Times Travel Section, Laskin also writes for the Washington Post, the Seattle Times, and Seattle Metropolitan. He and his wife Kate O'Neill, the parents of three grown daughters, live in Seattle with their two sweet old dogs.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vivid Portraits of Immigrants in US Military in the Great War, March 27, 2010

By 

Mary Whisner (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War (P.S.) (Kindle Edition)

In the late 19th and early 20th century, millions of immigrants came to America, fleeing poverty, pogroms, and the draft. When the U.S. entered World War I, thousands of immigrant men enlisted or were drafted to serve in the military, returning to Europe in similar ocean liners to the ones that had brought them. David Laskin sees this military service as a critical step in the Americanization of the immigrants -- even though they returned to often virulent xenophobia during the Red Scare.

As he did in _The Children's Blizzard_, Laskin makes vivid a sweeping story by focusing on a small number of individuals (in this case, 12 men). He begins with the immigrants' lives in Europe -- the Italian boy in a rocky farm, the Norwegian man who left the farm to work on a fishing boat, the Jewish scrap hauler in the Russian pale. And then he follows them on their journeys to America in the fetid barracks of steerage. On they go to their new homes: the copper mines in Butte, a blanket factory in New England, the Lower East Side. A couple of them enlisted long before World War I; one was part of Pershing's force chasing Pancho Villa (earlier he'd been a mercenary selling arms to Pancho Villa).

And then there's the military. The transition from civilian life was difficult. How could the Army train a crowd of recruits who spoke dozens of languages and were often malnourished and in terrible shape? How could the immigrants get past the ethnic slurs flung at them by the native-born soldiers? And what sort of soldiers would these immigrants make?

Eventually, they shipped out, fully trained or not, and Laskin takes us to the trenches and the shattered forests of the Great War. Using the immigrants' own words -- from letters home, diaries, and, in a couple of cases, interviews (he met one veteran who was 107!) -- and accounts from others who were in the same battles, he gives detailed accounts of the horrors and the heroism of war.

This isn't a war book just for military history buffs. Recommended for those interested in the immigrant experience and U.S. history generally.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent and detail-packed introduction to a complex topic (WWI)., June 7, 2010

By 

Tom Brody (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War (Hardcover)

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THE LONG WAY HOME by David Laskin is 386 pages long, printed on off-white paper, with 16 pages of glossy black and white photos. The photos show immigrants on ocean liners, crowded street scenes in New York City, and some of the actual characters of this book, e.g., Matej Kocak (Slovak), Tommaso Ottaviano (Italian), Meyer Epstein (Russian Jew from the Pale), Epifanio Affatato (Italian), Max Chieminski (Polish), and others. In this book, which concerns WWI, the author took the creative approach towards history, of providing standard history text dotted with anecdotes relating to twelve immigrants who later became U.S. soldiers. To view the big picture, these 12 immigrants left Europe to escape the draft, but were drafted into the U.S. military and returned to Europe.

THE PASSAGE. The book provides a context for Meyer Epstein, one of the 12 characters of the book. A region of Russia called "the Pale" was where 2 million Jews left between 1881-1914, where there was a tradition called tzedakah where poor Jews took care of poorer Jews. Meyer was from the Pale. An Italian, Rocco Pierro, left Italy in 1890 to put up telephone poles in America. He commuted home to Italy every year to make babies (pages 8-13). In Poland, "word has spread that in America wages were 8 times higher than in Poland. So what if they had to dig coal out of the hills or work 12 hours a day next to a blast furnace." (page 18). After disclosing fun facts about the motherland, the author details the passage. We learn that ships for immigrants had automatic flushing toilets, because it was expected that the immigrants were too ignorant to know what to do with a toilet handle (p. 32). We learn about eye exams where doctors used a buttonhook to lift up eyelids to seek diseased eyes. Page 51 provides an inspiring story of how Meyer Epstein became a plumber in New York. We learn of Peter Thompson, an Irish immigrant working a Montana copper mine: "He was making $3.50 a day now, and there was talk that the war would soon drive wages even higher." (page 87)

OUTBREAK. Then the book discloses the outbreak of WWI. Pages 79-82 disclose the chain reaction leading to WWI, Russia taking Konigsberg, and Germany striking back. We learn that the Allies were Russia, Britain, and France, and that the enemy was Germany and Austria, and that before WWI, Jews were barred from Russian universities but welcomed in German universities (p. 94). We learn that Italy was in limbo, and that on April 26, 1915, Italy joined England and France in the London pact. We learn of the Zimmermann telegram, which played a pivotal role in persuading the U.S. to join WWI (p. 118-121).

THE DRAFT. The book takes a detour to Mexico, to narrate the adventures of Jewish immigrant Sam Dreben who hobnobbed with Pancho Villa (p. 73-78, 108-111), and who then worked for General J.J. Pershing. We learn that, in response to the Civil War draft, there were riots, but that in the WWI draft, the only fighting involved, "two Italian men from the Bronx who tried to push their way to the head of the line so they could be first to register." (p. 125) We learn that the main trouble-makers in the U.S. were the Irish, who found it repugnant that they would be fighting on the same side as the English. We learn that the Poles were the most pro-war immigrants, but the fact that Germany had captured part of Poland (creating the notion that these Poles were really Germans) caused a legal glitch that prevented some Polish immigrants from registering for the U.S. draft (p. 128-129).

ENGLISH LESSONS. Then, the book turns towards recruitment and training. At Camp Gordon, 3/4ths of the recruits did not speak English. Page 141 discloses the U.S. military's solution to the problem of immigrant recruits who couldn't speak English -- courses in English. The Camp Gordon plan worked so well, that it was used at 15 army camps in the U.S. We learn that in the 77th Division, also called the Times Square Division, the men spoke 43 different languages. We learn that the 7th Regiment was called the Silk Stocking Regiment because its members were sons of millionaires. We learn that U.S. recruits were required to sniff chlorine gas and tear gas so that they could recognize it on the battlefield (p. 152). An amusing anecdote is provided about Tony Pierro, who trained at Camp Gordon, and who wound up in France, but was unable to command horses. Eventually, after trying commands in English and in Italian, he acquired lessons in French, and was then able to command the horses in French (p. 232).

CONCLUSION. This book is ideal for folks who wonder about the sources and manifestations of ethnic prejudices. The book will also be of interest to those with a general curiosity of career transitions, that is, how twelve unrelated immigrants got from point A to point B, in terms of geography and occupation. The reading level of the book is suitable for people ages twelve and up. The author is to be commended for sticking to the topic at hand. There is no journalistic fluff in this focused book. There are no digressions to off-point topics. Hopefully, the author will use the same technique (following the lives of 12 unrelated people) to write another book about U.S. history.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars War: The Great Semi-Homogenizer, November 11, 2010

By 

NyiNya "NyiNya" (It was broken when I got here...) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War (Hardcover)

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At the turn of the century, a flood of Europeans crammed themselves cheek to steerage class jowl onto anything that would float them across the Atlantic to the Promised Land. And having arrived here, they did what immigrants always do: Looked at one another with distrust and dislike...and from a distance. They set up enclaves that mirrored the Old Country with no "foreigners" allowed. Polish neighborhoods had their White Eagle markets and Doms Narodovy, Italians nibbled sfogliatelle at cafes just like those on the Via Vittorio Emanuele, and Jew lived with Jew. So how did we get to be Americans?

Propinquity, for the most part, and the gradual erosion of old country customs and mores. But World War I speeded up the process. Almost every family had someone making that reverse journey back Over There to fight the Kaiser. The military was then, as it is now, a great leveler. And war is a great distraction. Who has time to keep up neighborhood hostilities or wonder if you were born on the Buda or Pest side of the river when there's a guy in a pointy helmet heaving mustard gas at you.

David Laskin uses the experiences of 12 men -- Italians, Poles, Slovaks, Jews, Irishmen and Scandinavian -- to show us how immigrants go from "them" to "us," milestone by milestone.

The first milestone is the voyage to America. Laskin gives us such a in depth look at the crossing, full of interesting trivia, it gets the book off to a great start. Next we look on as they fan out across the country to find work digging for coal, building railroads, doing whatever backbreaking menial job they could.

As each chapter unfolds, we witness a gradual Americanization, but the process is painfully slow. The immigrants still identify more with the abandoned homeland, and Americans of established provenance don't exactly welcome them into the Yankee Brotherhood. But the boys are about to get a fateful tap on the shoulder from Uncle Sam that will change everything.

The curtain goes up on WWI and our guys get their invitations in the mail. Many immigrant draftees ended up at Camp Gordon, just outside of Atlanta, Georgia where the Army collected non-English speaking recruits and subjected them to English language immersion along with their basic military training. The so-called Gordon Plan was essential to building an army. Almost 75% of those recruited during WWI did not speak English as a first language!

Each chapter gives us more intersting detail and trivia (scattered like little minty chips in good chocolate ice cream...they make something that was already good superb). We learn that the Times Square Division (the 77th) had a staggering 43 different languages heard around the mess tables. At the opposite end of the social spectrum, one group of soldiers had hobnobbed together before donning their uniforms. Scions of America's richest families who knew one another from boarding school, debutante balls, family camps in the Adirondacks and Grand Tours of Europe all belonged to the 7th Division. Or what the rest of the army called The Silk Stocking Regiment.

Training over, our boys are deployed, and we follow them to the battlefields of the War to End All Wars. I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about military history to comment on whether or not author Laskin dots every i or crosses every t in terms of getting the battles, the dates and the places right, or if he gets the names right when he mentions who led what and where, but in terms of reducing war to a human scale and bringing to life the experiences of some poor schmuck kid mired down and miserable in a muddy trench, Laskin delivers.

Finally, we have The Return to America as Americans. But here is why we've remained such a fascinating and diverse culture: Yes, they come home about as assimilated as you can get, but at the same time, they don't go all Tabula Rasa on us. They became them AND us, joining the Sons of Italy and the American Legion. So we really aren't E Pluribus Unum, but more E Pluribus Unim-ish. Original recipe and extra crispy, all at the same time.

"The Long Way Home" is an amazing narrative and a touching one. Anyone whose forebears passed through Ellis Island, or who is game for a different and compelling take on the military experience may want to take a look at it.

NOTE: What used to be Camp Gordon is now the DeKalb Peachtree Airport. Fort Gordon, an active military base located near Augusta, is often confused with Camp Gordon, as is the Camp Gordon Johnston Museum in Carrabelle, Florida. The latter site commemorates the ambphibious soldiers who trained there during WWII. Of the original Camp Gordon, no trace remains. No museum commemorates it or the hundreds of thousands of men who walked in without even a language in common and marched out American soldiers.

Me, I don't like glorifying war. It's all madness and murder for profit. But even so, I can't help but think maybe Camp Gordon and the men who trained there deserve a little fist bump.