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

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More About This Book

Overview

In The Long Way Home, award-winning writer David Laskin traces the lives of a dozen men who left their childhood homes in Europe, journeyed through Ellis Island, and started over in a strange land–only to cross the Atlantic again in uniform when their adopted country entered the Great War.

Though they had known little of America outside of tight-knit ghettos and backbreaking labor, these foreign-born conscripts were rapidly transformed into soldiers, American soldiers, in the ordeal of war. Two of the men in this book won the Medal of Honor. Three died in combat. Those who survived were profoundly altered–and their heroic service reshaped their families and ultimately the nation itself.

Epic, inspiring, and masterfully written, this book is an unforgettable true story of the Great War, the world it remade, and the humble, loyal men who became Americans by fighting for America.

Editorial Reviews

Steven V. Roberts
[America is] never perfect, never static, never finished. We are constantly enriched by new blood, energy and ideas. As Barack Obama put it in his inaugural address, "Our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness." In this compelling book, Laskin makes this same point by following the lives of 12 American doughboys who had been born in Europe and who then returned there to fight for their adopted country in World War I. It's an imaginative concept, and Laskin mines family legends and official documents to tell the stories of these ordinary foot soldiers from Italy and Ireland, Poland and Russia, Slovakia and Norway.
—The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
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. (Mar.)
More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews
Library Journal
Laskin follows 12 men, born in Europe, who emigrated to America, made lives here, and eventually found themselves in the American Expeditionary Force of World War I. They mostly left tight-knit communities of immigrants—Italians, Jews, Poles, Slovaks, Russians, and Irish—to fight in Europe, but they returned as Americans, a sea change that affected the nation ever after. Strongly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/09.]

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780061233340
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
  • Publication date: 3/15/2011
  • Pages: 448
  • Sales rank: 255,839
  • Series: P.S. Series
  • Product dimensions: 5.20 (w) x 7.90 (h) x 1.10 (d)

Meet the Author

David Laskin is the author of The Children's Blizzard, winner of the Midwest Booksellers' Choice Award for nonfiction and the Washington State Book Award. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Smithsonian magazine. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Table of Contents

Twelve Who Served xi

Introduction xv

Chapter 1 Old Countries 1

Chapter 2 Journeys 23

Chapter 3 Streets of Gold 44

Chapter 4 The Weak, the Broken, and the Mentally Crippled 65

Chapter 5 The World at War 79

Chapter 6 The Army of Forty-Three Languages 122

Chapter 7 I Go Where You Send Me 157

Chapter 8 July 4, 1918 173

Chapter 9 These Fought in Any Case 194

Chapter 10 The Jews and the Wops and the Dirty Irish Cops 221

Chapter 11 The Arc of Fire 242

Chapter 12 Breaking the Line 255

Chapter 13 Blanc Mont 271

Chapter 14 Why Should I Shoot Them? 296

Chapter 15 Postwar 312

Acknowledgments 351

Sources 359

Index 373

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4.5
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Sort by: Showing all of 9 Customer Reviews

  • Posted October 5, 2010

    more from this reviewer

    Cheirsh our diversity

    A well thought out idea and a well written book. Laskin takes the stories of a dozen immigrants new to the US aned shows how they came to fight for America in WW1. It is especially interesting to read of some of the common prejudices from the time and put them into context to our own times. If I left out the words 1915 or 1916, you would hear a lot of the same garbage being spewed today towrd what Teddy Roosevelt called hyphenated-Ameicians- lazy, good for nothing, not "Americanized" enough, different traditions and customs. Sound familiar? He then goes on to show how these people (one in five in the US at that time) from other countries came to fight for their new country. The war descriptions have a rare immediacy since they are based on the individuals take on the battle and not just an historical recitation of the facts. Read it with an open mind and you will be enthralled.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 28, 2011

    Highly recommended

    I bought this book because I loved the children's blizzard by David Laskin and I was not disapoointed. It is so interesting to get to know these men and their stories. It is a great read for anyone who likes history with personal stories.

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