The World of Our Fathers

Summary

This sweeping work of social history traces the migration of Eastern European Jews to the United States and the dense, vibrant immigrant culture they built in the tenements of New York's Lower East Side. Howe combines archival research with oral testimony to capture labor struggles, Yiddish theater, socialist politics, and the slow generational drift toward assimilation. The book reads as both rigorous scholarship and a heartfelt elegy.