World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made

A classic exploration of the American Jewish experience by one of our greatest twentieth-century intellectuals

Winner of the National Book Award, 1976

World of Our Fathers traces the journeys of Eastern Europe's Jews to America over four decades. Beginning in the 1880s, it offers a rich portrayal of the East European Jewish experience in New York, and shows how the immigrant generation tried to maintain their Yiddish culture while becoming American. It is essential reading for those interested in understanding why these forebears to many of today's American Jews made the decision to leave their homelands, the challenges these new Jewish Americans faced, and how they experienced every aspect of immigrant life in the early part of the twentieth century.

This invaluable contribution to Jewish literature and culture is now back in print in a paperback edition, which includes a foreword by the noted author and literary critic Morris Dickstein.

Read more Continue reading Read less REVIEW
"Irving Howe has written a great book . . . a marvelous narrative." -- The New York Times Book Review

"World of Our Fathers is a book for Jew and non-Jew, for immigrants and native-born Americans. It is a book for all people." -- Chicago Tribune Book World ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Irving Howe (1920-1993) played a pivotal role in American intellectual life for over five decades, from the 1940s to the 1990s. Best known for World of Our Fathers, Howe also won acclaim for his prodigious output of illuminating essays on American culture and as an indefatigable promoter of democratic socialism. He was the founding editor of Dissent, the journal he edited for nearly forty years.

Morris Dickstein is Distinguished Professor of English and Theatre and Senior Fellow of the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of several books, including Leopards in the Temple: The Transformation of American Fiction, 1945-1970 Read more Continue reading Read less