Customer Reviews

Special Sorrows: The Diasporic Imagination of Irish, Polish, and Jewish Immigrants in the United States

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Jacobson's book is at once a painstaking review of original texts and a highly compelling read, no matter how long ago your family arrived. A must read for professional historians and anyone interested in American Studies and Cultural History

This book focuses on the immigration period around the turn of the last century. The first few chapters on how life in USA chronnicled the emigrants' views; that is, the reasons for emigration and the hope the US policy would support their dreams of creating (Jews) or reclaiming (Irish an Poles) a homeland. This part was somewhat tedious reading because it was too repetitive. The later chapters on the emigrants' reaction to the conflict in Cuba and the Phillipines were fascintating. It revealed the beginnings of empire building and sounded like current mideast policy.

This marvelous and insightful immigration history represents cultural history at its finest, with brilliant thoughts on the broader issues of homeland, citizenship and national identity alongside detailed investigations of Polish, Irish, and Eastern European settlers. If only this book was published in paperback, so it would be more accessible in the classroom!