Our Foreign-Born Citizens: What They Have Done for America

New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company. Good. (c.1922). First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [a bit of damage to the edges and corners of the covers in several spots, tiny rip in spine cloth; an ex-library book with typical markings, which provide interesting provenance (see notes)]. (B&W photographic portraits) Biographical sketches of thirty-four prominent individuals, chosen as "typical examples [of] citizens of foreign birth who have done things," with the chronicle of their various achievements intended to make the reader "acquainted with the potentialities of the alien, of the right kind." (That kind, of course, being exclusively white and male, and with just a couple of token Jews.) The subjects range from well-known figures like Andrew Carnegie, Alexander Graham Bell, John James Audubon, Joseph Pulitzer and Nikola Tesla, to more obscure individuals such as Ottmar Mergenthaler (inventor of the linotype) and Niels Ebbesen Hansen (a plant scientist whose discoveries revolutionized the farming of alfalfa). An ex-library book with typical trimmings, which in this case provide an interesting provenance: various stamps and two bookplates identify it as once having been in the library of the Training School for Jewish Social Work, operated by the Jewish Welfare Board, 220 Fifth Avenue, New York. ***This book is among the nearly 150 items offered in ReadInk's new Catalog Number 4, "Booking Passage: Books on the Immigrant Experience." You can access this catalog and its contents in any one of three ways: (1) email us to request a PDF to be emailed to you; (2) view or download the catalog from the link on our website's main page; (3) browse the books individually (including a few that didn't make the cut for the catalog) on our website under these two subject headings: "Immigration: Fiction" and "Immigration: Non-fiction." .