Journal Article Resident Strangers: Immigrant Laborers in New South Alabama Get access Resident Strangers: Immigrant Laborers in New South Alabama. By Jennifer E Brooks. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2022. xiv, 270 pp. Cloth, $45.00.) Jack Glazier Jack Glazier Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 110, Issue 4, March 2024, Pages 787–788, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaad391 Published: 01 March 2024

American EthnologistVolume 47, Issue 1 p. 90-91 Book Review From Boas to Black Power: Racism, Liberalism, and American Anthropology. Mark Anderson. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019. 272 pp. JACK GLAZIER, JACK GLAZIER Oberlin CollegeSearch for more papers by this author JACK GLAZIER, JACK GLAZIER Oberlin CollegeSearch for more papers by this author First published: 02 June 2020 https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12871Citations: 2Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume47, Issue1February 2020Pages 90-91 RelatedInformation

This chapter examines the relationship between American Sephardim and the very different European world from which they derive. It focuses on how they represent their Balkan homes in the case of the immigrants or how their children portray old-country origins. The chapter considers the relationship between memory and history. It explores the fundamental problem of American Sephardic cultural continuity in light of the extraordinary acculturative pressures exerted on the immigrant and second generation. The chapter draws on the Sephardic community of Indianapolis, which is in many respects an exemplar of the problems of continuity in the open society. The basic dilemma of the Sephardim is a familiar one to other ethnic groups—how to maintain a distinctive cultural and religious identity when the larger society creates social conditions that diminish exclusiveness. The linguistic trends index cultural changes within Sephardic communities.

Libby Garland, After They Closed the Gates: Jewish Illegal Immigration to the United States, 1921–1965 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014, 44.95). Pp. 344. isbn978 0 8173 1328 9. - Volume 49 Issue 2

Jewish Life in Small-Town America: A History, by Lee Shai Weissbach. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. 436 pp. $45.00. Patterns of Jewish life in small American towns took shape from the middle years of the nineteenth century until the end of World War II. That period began with the settlement of German and Central European Jews throughout the United States, followed by the settlement of eastern European Jews in the four decades after 1881. By the mid-twentieth century, Jewish communal life in small towns had reached a high point, but an array of social, economic, and demographic forces pointed toward the inevitable decline of those communities. Small Jewish communities emerged in small American towns, although most of the latter lacked any Jewish population at all. American cities by contrast consistently attracted large Jewish concentrations, and indeed our understanding of the American Jewish experience is conditioned by the predominantly urban character of Jewish life. By the mid-1920s, nearly 200 American cities had Jewish populations of at least a thousand people. At the same time that most Jews were gravitating toward large and midsize urban locales, others were establishing themselves in towns of modest size, many of which counted their Jewish population in the hundreds. Understanding the organization and dynamics of these "triple-digit" communities-those places with a Jewish population of more than a hundred but less than a thousand-is the worthy task that Lee Shai Weissbach has set for himself. In 1927, 490 triple digit Jewish communities dotted the country, yet until the publication of this important volume we have had very little analytical understanding of how Jews made their way in these locales. Instead, we have had to rely on amateur local histories, synagogue commemorative volumes, and the like. But this is not a dry, academic account. It is instead a lively, well written, and accessible book, rich in illustrative cases, about a segment of American Jewish life long neglected by historians and social scientists. It is sure to interest a lay readership as well. Ranging widely across the 490 communities, Weissbach singles out a dozen representative towns for closer scrutiny. He relies on demographic data from the federal census as well as population figures from various Jewish sources. City directories, local community and synagogue histories, newspaper and magazine stories, and archival papers, including those of the Industrial Removal Office, also provided very useful material for the author's painstaking research. In chapters on settlement patterns, population stability and mobility, livelihood and class, family life, congregational organization, synagogue history, religious leadership, cultural patterns among both German and eastern European Jews, and prejudice, Weissbach argues that "place matters." "Place" is indeed the leitmotif of the book. Small Jewish communities and their larger urban counterparts of course shared many common features, including the estrangements and affinities between German and eastern European Jews and Jewish efforts in general to remain distinct while still seeking acceptance by non-Jewish neighbors. …

Totems and Teachers: Key Figures in the History of Anthropology . Sydel Silverman, eds. New York: AltaMira Press, 2004. 258 pp.

Totems and Teachers: Key Figures in the History of Anthropology. Sydel Silverman, eds. New York: AltaMira Press, 2004. 258 pp.

Problems and Issues of Diversity in the United States. Larry. Naylor. ed. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1999. vii. 215 pp., bibliography, index.