Daughters of the Shtetl

This book is an overview of a very specific area, mainly the history and actions of immigrant Jewish garment workers, who primarily immigrated from the Pale, in great numbers after 1905. Obviously, this is a specialized study and not the sort of thing you would pick up in place of a Danielle Steele novel, but the writing is clear and compelling. One of the main benefits of the book is that although you may have no particular interest in the subject matter, the book is so engagingly written that you learn almost in spite of yourself and have trouble putting the book down. The book is split into 6 major parts: Jewish Womanhood in Eastern Europe; Remarking the Jewish Family Economy in America; Unwritten Laws: Work and Opportunity in the Garment Industry; The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Work; Women and the Mass Strike Movement; The New Unionism and the New Womanhood. The book is at its strongest in the earlier and mid sections, when the author relies on a lot of first-hand accounts to create the portrait of what life was like for these women, where they were coming from and what they experienced. The discussions of the actual historical events were a bit more removed from the first-person analysis, and accordingly, less engaging. All in all, a very interesting book, particularly for those interested in understanding what life was like for a substantial portion of immigrants at the turn of last century.

This book is about the growth of the garment workers' unions and the place within that growth that the Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe took. It was well-written, well-researched. Were I a history professor looking for a informative additional text regarding the turn of the Twentieth Century, I believe I would put this book on the top of the list.