American Passage: The History of Ellis Island

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More About This Book

Overview

For most of New York's early history, Ellis Island had been an obscure little island that barely held itself above high tide. Today the small island stands alongside Plymouth Rock in our nation's founding mythology as the place where many of our ancestors first touched American soil.

American Passage captures a time and a place unparalleled in American immigration and history, and articulates the dramatic and bittersweet accounts of the immigrants, officials, interpreters, and social reformers who all played an important role in Ellis Island's chronicle. In this sweeping, often heart-wrenching epic, Vincent J. Cannato reveals that the history of Ellis Island is ultimately the story of what it means to be an American.

Editorial Reviews

Jonathan Yardley
Cannato…has written a popular rather than scholarly history of Ellis Island, but he resists the temptation to sentimentalize the place. He understands that, now as then, immigration is an issue that leaves Americans uncomfortable and contentious, even as it continues to bring new blood and energy into the country. Ellis Island may have been converted into something of a feel-good theme park, but the questions it raises remain unresolved.
—The Washington Post
Library Journal

Using a variety of primary sources, Cannato (The Ungovernable City) describes Ellis Island as a place and as an experience for the approximately 12 million immigrants who passed through it from 1892 to 1924. He follows its reincarnation as a detention center for wartime aliens and as a monument and museum, which he admits may celebrate uncritically "ethnic triumphalism" and upward mobility. Cannato writes that understaffing resulted in only perfunctory screening for mental, physical, and moral traits that might have made newcomers public charges, and he disabuses readers of the fallacy that examiners, rather than steamship officials or immigrants bent on assimilation, changed entrants' last names. With a focus on how "actual people created, interpreted, and executed immigration laws," Cannato maintains that regulation, which sometimes degraded into restriction, formed part of Progressive era reform and growing federal involvement to safeguard what was deemed the public interest. This measured book helps to place in perspective discussions-sure to matter to genealogists and those engaged in political discourse-of Ellis Island and the idea of immigration as a privilege rather than a right. Essential reading.
—Frederick J. Augustyn Jr.

More Reviews (5) Fewer Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
A sweeping history of "the place where the United States worked out its extraordinary national debate over immigration for over three decades."Approximately 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island from 1892 to 1924, writes Cannato (History/Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston; The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York, 2001). The last immigrant was processed there in 1954, and Ellis Island is now a national monument. The author reaches back to the island's beginnings in the early 19th century, when, then named Gibbet Island, it served as a venue for hanging convicted pirates. Cannato then chronicles the many different people-immigrants, immigration officials, politicians and others-who made Ellis Island what it was in the early 20th century, delving into the stories of several important individuals lost to mainstream history. These include Prescott Farnsworth Hall, founder of the 19th-century Immigration Restriction League, and Louis Post, who, as acting Secretary of Labor in 1920, prevented the deportation of several individuals during an early Red Scare. Cannato also addresses the long-lasting political debate over immigration in the United States, which was often rooted in economic concerns, particularly during the Depression. In one fascinating section, the author looks at two contradictory 1892 reports, commissioned by Benjamin Harrison's administration, on the plight of Russian Jewish immigrants. One report discussed in detail how the immigrants came to America to flee brutal persecution, while another claimed they were simply paupers and criminals scheming to take jobs away from "native-born" workingmen. Indeed, such bigotry is an unfortunatelycommon theme. Cannato describes an 1896 editorial cartoon that shows the xenophobia that faced new arrivals-a crude sketch of a sickly immigrant carrying baggage marked "Poverty," "Disease," "Superstition" and "Anarchy." Telling details illuminate the vastness of the immigrant experience. So many people came through Ellis Island in 1906, for example, that "it witnessed 327 deaths, 18 births, 2 suicides, and 508 marriages."Ambitious in scope and rooted in solid storytelling.
Associated Press
“Cannato navigates the crosscurrents of immigration since the 1700s, illustrating his tale generously with odd facts and highly readable stories.”
The New York Post
“Cannato does a masterful job of weaving together a slew of singular immigrant stories with the larger issues that surrounded newcomers. He gives us the politics, the health scares and epidemics, the crowding, the corruption and the public policy.”
The Wall Street Journal
“Mr. Cannato’s writing is vivid and accessible, and his approach is admirably even-handed.”
USA Today
“Historian Vincent Cannato appears to have overlooked nothing in telling the tale of the historic island, now a national monument. . . . Cannato is not only a meticulous researcher and historian, he’s also a lively storyteller. A rare combination.”

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780060742737
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
  • Publication date: 6/9/2009
  • Pages: 496
  • Sales rank: 299,722
  • Product dimensions: 6.40 (w) x 9.10 (h) x 1.60 (d)

Meet the Author

Vincent J. Cannato teaches history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is the author of The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York and has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4.5
( 8 )

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Sort by: Showing 1 – 11 of 8 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted June 15, 2009

    A spectacular story!

    Cannato's narrative gives voice to the myriad thousands who passed through Ellis Island's gate. Well researched and written. A necessary book for readers interested in immigration study or American history.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted September 26, 2009

    A very informative book

    This is a very informative read. Everything I had heard about regarding Ellis Island really wasn't true, this books set the record straight. A must read for anyone tracing their ancestry or seeking an enlightened view of life when our families or origin landed.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 22, 2009

    Great history account of a very significant American Era

    Written very well; very factual; interesting for people who want to know how the past influences today!

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted August 8, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    Very Good Book

    I bought this book for my Father, he is from New York and found it to be a very interesting book, with details he had never heard about. He enjoyed it and so did my Mother, who read it after he did. He still talks about it and brings up interesting facts every now and then. He is hard to buy books for because he reads all the time (he is 89 years young) my sister always seems to get the right books but this is the first time I have gotten one that he really liked and will read again.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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