Publisher's Synopsis
The Making of An American is a memoir written by Jacob A. Riis, a Danish immigrant who became a prominent social reformer in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The book chronicles Riis's journey from his impoverished upbringing in Denmark to his eventual success as a journalist and advocate for social change in America. Riis describes his experiences as an immigrant in New York City, where he worked as a police reporter and witnessed firsthand the poverty, crime, and squalor of the city's slums. He also discusses his involvement in various social reform movements, including the fight for tenement housing reform and the establishment of settlement houses for immigrants. Throughout the book, Riis emphasizes the importance of education, hard work, and perseverance in achieving the American Dream. The Making of An American provides a unique perspective on the immigrant experience in America and offers valuable insights into the challenges faced by those seeking to build a better life in a new country.In all of which I have made no account of a factor which is at the bottom of half our troubles with our immigrant population, so far as they are not of our own making: the loss of reckoning that follows uprooting; the cutting loose from all sense of responsibility, with the old standards gone, that makes the politician's job so profitable in our large cities, and that of the patriot and the housekeeper so wearisome. We all know the process. The immigrant has no patent on it. It afflicts the native, too, when he goes to a town where he is not known.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.
