PBS: Destination America [Hardcover]

Chuck Wills (Author), David Grubin (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2005

Whether they were escaping religious persecution, political oppression, or the violence of war, or looking to further their careers or their economic standings, immigrants have come to America. Take a detailed look at why immigrants left their homelands, how they traveled to America, and what they did once they arrived.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Accompanying a PBS series, this book explores the historical issues that pushed or pulled people from other lands to America to create a new people and culture. Proceeding chronologically through U.S. history, the book highlights the introduction of different ethnicities: the first Americans, believed to have migrated from Europe or Asia across a "land bridge" in what is now the Bering Strait; European explorers, including, of course, Christopher Columbus; the slave trade; and European immigrants from the early 1800s through the 1900s. Wills details the conflicts as groups from other nations arrived, with emphasis on "Americanizing" immigrants, and the fabled role of Ellis Island in the immigrant story, as well as anti-immigration policies of the early 1900s. Separate chapters explore the appeal of the U.S. to immigrants: the freedom to worship and to create and freedom from oppression, want, and fear. Ample photographs and profiles of individual immigrants combine with the narrative to provide a lively and human look at how the nation has attracted a polyglot of people to create Americans. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Chuck Wills is an author and editor specializing in American history. He is the author of Boom Times, Hard Times history of America in the 1920's and 1930's.

David Grubin is a producer, director, writer, and cinematographer who has won every major award in his field, including 3 George Foster Peabody awards, 2 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University awards, and 9 Emmys. He has produced over 100 films on subjects ranging from biographies of American Presidents for American Experience on PBS to The Secret Life of the Brain, Napoleon, and Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: DK ADULT (September 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0756613442
• ISBN-13: 978-0756613440
• Product Dimensions: 11.9 x 10.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,291,704 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gorgeous book and good read, October 20, 2005

By 

M. Leder - See all my reviews

This review is from: PBS: Destination America (Hardcover)

Informative and fun to read, Destination America is comprehensive in scope and beautifully illustrated. It would make a great gift for any history buff or student.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Forgotten Turks who also came to America and distortion of history, November 24, 2007

By 

Yuksel Oktay - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: PBS: Destination America (Hardcover)

This is an excellent book with some omissions and deficiencies on the story of immigration to America in terms of the Four Freedoms expressed in an illustration by the famous American painter Norman Rockwell: "Freedom to Worship, Freedom from Oppression, Freedom From Want, and Freedom from Fear", to which a 5th dimension has been added, "Freedom to Create." With more than 500 photos and artworks, Destination America is a very informative, entertaining and comprehensive "family portrait" of the United States, where I have lived, on and off, for 50 years.

Following the Introduction, the first section, Settling in America, tells the story of the First Americans and the settlement of America from the 1500s to the 1800s by the Spanish, the French, the English, the Dutch and Swedish settlers with stories of the Native Americans and the enslaved Africans. It is a moving chronicle that leads to the Thirteen Colonies, the Revolutionary War and closing the "Golden Door."

The next four sections tell the story of immigrants from every corner of the world, including the Armenians under "Freedom from Fear." However, there are very few references to Turks or Turkish immigrants who started coming to America during the late 19th century and the early 20th century, which probably numbers around 300,000 today. Early comers were largely Ottoman citizens with different ethnic backgrounds and a few thousand Turks who first showed up, including those during the famous Chicago Worlds fair in 1890s, did not stay to become citizens. Most who came from the Ottoman lands are mentioned under "Muslims" (page 94) where immigration from the Islamic world is described as a fairly recent phenomenon in the United states, but with major cultural impact, perhaps numbering over 7 million. The reason given for the immigration from Syria and Lebanon, then parts of the Ottoman Empire, is young men seeking to avoid conscription into the Turkish Army.

The Armenians have been given a special treatment with 2 pages presenting a brief history followed by what is referred to as "The Horrors of 1915", without mentioning the many Armenian uprisings in eastern Anatolia, some of which were probably organized by Armenians already settled in the United States long before the conflict started. The article begins with the following statement: "Many historians consider the fate of the Armenians during World war I to be the first European genocide of the 20th century. While the Turkish persecution of the Armenians remains controversial it led to an influx of up to 100,000 Armenians to America. Today, about half of the nation's million or so Armenian-Americans live in Califrnia." The book needs to be revised referring to the death of both the Armenians and the Turks, not to a myhtical genocide.

The last section "Freedom to Create" includes Eli Kazan under "Theater", referring to him as a Greek-American born in Turkey. The short biography of Kazan states that he won fame directing plays by Arthur Miller (such as The Death of a Salesman) and Tennessee Williams and acclaimed films such as "On the Waterfront", but Kazan's reputation among some of his peers was tarnished because he named names to the House Committee on Un-American activities during its hearing on communism in Hollywood in the early 1950s, which did not prevent him from receiving an Honorary Oscar for Lifetime achievement in 1999. He also wrote many books, including "The Anatolian", his life story. But the book does not mention Ahmet Ertegun, the legendary "Music man" who made many musicians famous, including Ray Charles, and died last year and was buried in Uskudar, Istanbul.

In March 2006, PBS aired a documentary on the Armenian genocide, but refused the showing of another documentary, "The Armenian Revolt", which would expose the one sided treatment of the Armenian issue in "Destination America." PBS, supposedly created for the good of public, is doing a disservice to the Turkish-Americans and the general public by disseminating false information, the way the Armenian issue is presented in this book being an example. What a shame.

The book also has a wealth of information on the immigration and [...] .

Yuksel Oktay
New Jersey

7 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars So Mendacious It's Hard to Begin...., March 14, 2006

By 

Dunnyveg "Dunnyveg" (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: PBS: Destination America (Hardcover)

This book's greatest worth would be as kindling as energy prices continue their upward creep. To begin with, the Indians were NOT culturally American. They identified with their tribe and nation. The idea of an American polity was utterly alien to them until fairly recently. Blacks weren't able to maintain a distinct culture due to their bondage. Their culture was a synthesis of the Virginia Cavaliers (the slaveholding class, which this book only obliquely alludes to) and a few discreet folkways brought from Africa. A case in point: ebonics is actually the closest thing we have to the aristocratic speechways prevalent among the English aristocracy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Regional accents are part and parcel of regional American cultures.

This volume perpetuates the myth that there is one American culture that immigrants were expected to assimilate into. This myth gets the author in trouble, as lies tend to do. Because he begins white immigration around 1800, he passes right over the essence of American culture. America was actually culturally founded between 1620 and 1776 by four groups: the Puritans, the Quakers, the Virginia Cavaliers, and the Scots-Irish. Smaller ethnic groups of immigrants, as well as succeeding waves of immigration, adapted to one of these cultures depending on what region of the country they migrated to. These regional cultures frequently clashed in the past (e.g., the Civil War) and continue to manifest themselves today as the contest between "red" states (dominated by Scots-Irish and Cavalier cultures of the South) and "blue" states (dominated by Puritans and what remains of Quaker liberalism). All one has to do is to listen to the name-calling (yankee, elite, redneck, hillbilly, etc.) to realize the depths of the indigenous cultural antagonisms in America.

Anybody interested in American culture would do well to forego this abominably bad work and instead opt for Fischer's "Albion's Seed." Right now, Mr. Wills is only lying to himself. Don't let him lie to you as well.