Unfinished People

Nearly three million Jews came to America from Eastern Europe between 1880 and the outbreak of World War I filled with the hope of life in a new land. Within two generations these newcomers settled and prospered in the densely populated Yiddish-speaking neighborhoods of New York City. Against this backdrop Ruth Gay narrates their rarely told story―a unique and vibrant portrait of a people in their daily trials and rituals―bringing alive the vitality of the streets markets schools synagogues and tenement halls where a new version of America was invented in the 1920s and 1930s. An intimate unforgettable account Unfinished People is a singular act of expressing in words the richly textured lives of a resilient people. A touching and funny evocation...marvelous in its detail.... This is history as day-to-day living―irrevocable and unforgotten.―Alfred Kazin