The stories are grouped into categories:
The Changers, including Marlo Thomas, Gabrielle Giffords, Cory Booker, and Linda Hills the great-granddaughter of Andrew Carnegie.
The Lovers, including Alan Alda, Deborah Norville, and US Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao.
The Originals with an essay by Ray Halbritter representing the Oneida Indian Nation.
The Rescuers, including Marine Corps officer Zach Iscol and retired police officer Matt Tomasic.
The Seekers, including Dr Mehmet Oz, Rhodes Scholar Ahmed Ahmed, Governor of Rhode Island Gina Raimondo, and US Senator Barbara Boxer.
The Strivers, including Michael Bloomberg, Andrew Cuomo, Professor Joseph Bower of Harvard Business School, US Senator Tim Scott, and Hemings family descendant Ben Freeman..
The Survivors, including oncology nurse Nataliya Denchenko, Prof. Jorge Dominguez of Harvard, KIND founder Daniel Lubetzky, and Florida congresswoman Stephanie Murphy.
The Trailblazers, including Tony Bennett, Nancy Pelosi, author Lisa Birnbach, first Mainland China trustee of an Ivy League university Prof. Mao Ye, and investment banker and financial historian Eugene Dattel.
The Undocumented, including Dr. Richard Uscher Levine, Harvard student Erick Meza, and garment worker Helen Polychronopoulos.
The Institutions, including the American Ballet Theater, Monticello, and UJA/Catholic Charities.
The authors contend that the image of the American 'melting pot' should be replaced by the concept of a mosaic, "tiles of different colors and shapes indistinguishable from afar but quite distinctive the closer you get. A mosaic is only as good as its grout...used to bind and fit between the distinct stones...and hold it in place."
40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children, including AT&T, Procter & Gamble, US Steel, DuPont, Craft, International Paper, Nordstrom, and more recently Goggle, eBay, GE, IBM, McDonald's, and Apple.
The stories are inspirational and uplifting, and will make readers consider their own immigrant roots and the social, political, and economic factors that inspired them to leave their homeland.
All profits from the sale of this book will be donated to the New-York Historical Society and the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation.
People are invited to share their family journey at www.journeysamericanstory.com
I found this book interesting on several levels: as a composite of American experience, a political statement, and, as a family genealogy researcher, as family history.
My own immigrant family history includes stories of fleeing persecution, seeking religious freedom, and hoping for a better life.
My Gochenour Swiss Brethren ancestors sought religious freedom, moving across Europe before settling in the Shenandoah Valley by 1742. My Becker ancestors were Baptist German Russians who fled increasing hostility against German nationalists in Russia--and to avoid being recalled into the Czar's army. My Ramer ancestor was a Palatine German who fled the continual warfare that decimated their homeland, settling in Pennsylvania, and then fought in the Revolutionary War. And my Greenwood great-grandparents left Britain a hundred years ago, my great-grandfather wanting a better life than working in a mine or the cotton mills of Lancashire.
What is your family journey?
I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
Journeys: An American Story
by Andrew Tisch, Mary Skafidas
Publication Date: July 3, 2018
ISBN: 9781948122016, 1948122014
Hardcover $27.99 USD
from the publisher:
Every family has a story of how they arrived in America, whether it was only a few months, years, decades, or centuries ago. Journeys: An American Story celebrates the vastness and variety of immigration tales in America, featuring seventy-three essays about the different ways we got here. This is a collection of family lore, some that has been passed down through generations, and some that is being created right now.
Journeys: An American Story captures the quintessential idea of the American dream. The individuals in this book are only a part of the brilliant mosaic of people who came to this country and made it what it is today. Read about a Governor’s grandfathers who dug ditches and cleaned sewers, laying the groundwork for a budding nation; how a future cabinet secretary crossed the ocean at age eleven on a cargo ship; about a young boy who fled violence in Budapest to become one of the most celebrated players of American football; the girl who escaped persecution to become the first Vietnamese American woman ever elected to the US congress; or the limo driver whose family took a seventy-year detour before finally arriving at his original destination, along with many other fascinating tales of extraordinary and everyday Americans.
In association with the New-York Historical Society, Andrew Tisch and Mary Skafidas have reached out to a variety of notable figures to contribute an enlightening and unique account of their family’s immigration story. All profits will be donated to the New-York Historical Society and the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation.
Featuring Essays by:
Alan Alda
Arlene Alda
Tony Bennett
Cory Booker
Michael Bloomberg
Barbara Boxer
Elaine Chao
Andrew Cuomo
Ray Halbritter
Jon Huntsman
Wes Moore
Stephanie Murphy
Deborah Norville
Dr. Oz
Nancy Pelosi
Gina Raimondo
Tim Scott
Jane Swift
Marlo Thomas
And many more!
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