World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made

A classic exploration of the American Jewish experience by one of our greatest twentieth-century intellectuals

Winner of the National Book Award, 1976

World of Our Fathers―Irving Howe’s seminal work of cultural history―traces the story of Eastern Europe's Jews to America over four decades. Beginning in the 1880s, it offers a rich portrayal of the East European Jewish experience in New York, and shows how the immigrant generation tried to maintain their Yiddish culture while becoming American. Howe sheds new light on why the forebears to many of today's American Jews decided to leave their homelands, the challenges these new Jewish Americans faced, and how they experienced every aspect of immigrant life in the early twentieth century. The resulting history is essential reading for those interested in understanding the American Jewish experience―in the past, and today.

With a foreword by noted author and literary critic Morris Dickstein, this newly reissued edition of Howe’s most celebrated work offers an invaluable contribution to Jewish literature and culture.