My Life In America Before, During and After the Civil War

New York Times Review in Book Shelf by Sam Roberts , “Louis Hensel, the autobiographical subject of “My Life in America Before, During and After the Civil War” (Jo-An Books; $26), never occupied the public stage. A German immigrant, he arrived in New York in 1842. His life spanned most of the 19th century, and, like a poor man’s de Tocqueville, he revealed it in letters, which have been translated from the German by Sigrid Wilshinsky, herself a German immigrant to the United States. “Louis ...