A history of Ellis Island that primarily focuses on the experiences of a handful of immigrants from Poland. Szejnert includes the stories of many long term employees of the immigration services on Ellis Island. She also discusses how the process of immigration on Ellis Island worked.
This book wasn't exactly what I expected from the description. It was very informative about the experiences of Polish immigrants to the United States. ( )

3.5-4 stars. May adjust as I think about it more.

I have been craving a nice, cited history book for weeks now--after all of the pseudo-history books I have read over the last 4 months,

This book was shortlisted for a WIT prize in England and sounded interesting--and my library had it. I thought it would be super interesting to get a take on Ellis Island from Eastern Europe. And it was--I learned quite a few things specific to the Polish immigration.

1) I knew Poland did not exist as a country for over 100 years (until 1918). So what did this means when the exclusion acts of the 1920s set the number of immigrants from any country at X% of those that came first c1910 and then c1890 (backing it up to discourage the "bad" immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and discouraging the "good" ones from northern and western Europe)? Poland (and Lithuania) did not exist during the years used to set the percentage. Szejnert does not answer this question, but I am very curious. Ruthenians, meanwhile, have never had a country. So did they get 0? Did they get counted with Poland? What about all of the Czechs and Hungarians and Ruthenians and Poles that were counted as from "Austria" because of the Austro-Hungarian Empire? So interesting, I need to look into this.

2) Szejnert also discusses (endnote 3) a not-well-known source she used. The tsarist government withheld letters from America--cash, tickets, the letters themselves--unbeknownst to those living in the partitions of Poland (can you imagine!?). These withheld letters ended up in an archive, and a historian and his students were working with them in 1944. The archive burned in the Warsaw Uprising, and the only surviving letters are ones they had already transcribed, and those they had taken for transcribing. He later published a book (in Polish) that Szejnert says has not gotten its due in the affected areas or in the Polish/Immigration academic communities. What an amazing project it would be to study the extant letters and trace families. Are their families out there still holding grudges about things that were the fault of the tsarist government? It is heartbreaking to think about it.

I liked the way this book is organized, starting with the Lenni Lenape and ending in the 21st century, and the way all chapter titles have to do with water/tides. A lot of the book focuses on the men who ran the station, and a few of the men and women staffers who served for a long time. There was one very strange translation--on page 308. "But the words poster children also calls to mind foster children, adoptees who must cope with a difficult start." This sentence makes no sense. "Poster children" and "foster children" do not bring each other to mind--they sound different and mean completely different things in completely different settings. And foster children are not adoptees, quite the opposite. I wonder if this is something translated directly and it does not work in English, or...what? (I even googled about the UK's foster system in case this was a UK/US thing, but nope...the two systems are similar.) ( )

I wanted this book because I thought my wife would like to read about the history of Ellis Island and about the people who arrived there. Her parents emigrated from Denmark to the United States in the 1920s. This book, however, is mostly about the immigrants who arrived from Poland and nearby countries. As it was, I went to a Polish grammar school in the suburbs of New York City, so the book was more to my liking. ( )

I have worked through half the book and found the stories interesting on their face. But I wanted more. I wanted to know what became of some of the people but their stories just ended. Perhaps that is all we will know because the lives just passed through. But I felt bounced from story to story and back again to the same person's story. And then it ended. Maybe it is because the book was translated, but I found the format confusing. It needs some work. ( )

As a second generation Polish American, I appreciated this book immensely. It explained so much more than I learned from my grandparents. I think it is a tribute to immigrants everywhere for their fortitude and courage. It is lso the story of the people who worked at Ellis Island and, for the most part, their humanity. I did find minor faults or annoyances with the book but they did not take away from the story. The cons were that I thought the language very stilted and the the story did not flow. It read more like a textbook and maybe that was the intention. It was also written in the present tense which didn't suit me. Had it not been for the cons, I would have given it 5 stars. ( )