aGerber uses sophisticated social theory -- quite elegantly -- for
a readable and insightful analysis of the immigrants and what
migration meant to them.a
--"Journal of American History"
a[I]n this excellent study . . . Gerber uses sophisticated
social theory -- quite elegantly -- for a readable and insightful
analysis of the immigrants and what migration meant to them. . . .
Gerber also breaks new ground by analyzing the arhythma of letter
writing -- how immigrantsa writing changed over time and what that
reveals about their psychology, emotion, and adjustment. . . .
Altogether, Gerber provides a fresh model and another high standard
for scholars of American immigration.a
--"Journal of American History"
aGerber provides an insightful examination of the role letters
play in the shaping of identity. . . . Will certainly help
historians to address personal immigrant letters more
critically.a
--"American Historical Review"
aAuthors of Their Lives is the definitive study of American and
Canadian immigrant letters. David Gerber employs psychology,
epistolary scholarship, as well as his superlative capacities as an
empathetic reader, to reveal how letters constitute not only a
record of immigrant experience, but were an agent in fashioning
that experience. Authors of Their Lives is an invaluable
contribution to transnational history at the most personal and
persuasive level.a
--John R. Gillis, author of "Islands of the Mind: How the Human
Imagination Created the Atlantic World"
aDavid Gerber provides a new reading of the immigrant letter.
Though informed by social theory, it is Gerber's astute analysis
which provides the reader a rare entree to the psychology
ofparticular immigrants. A unique achievement!a
--Rudolph J. Vecoli, Professor of History, University of
Minnesota-Twin Cities
aThis is a fascinating book. David Gerber carefully analyzes the
letter itself to focus on the development of individual identities
in the face of migration.a
--Jon Gjerde, author of "The Minds of the West: The Ethnocultural
Evolution of the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917"
aModern world history is populated by untold millions of
international migrants. They remain mainly anonymous. But some of
them wrote home, notably from America. These letters are the most
audible voice of such people. David Gerber interrogates this
wonderful genre from every conceivable angle. He subjects
letter-writing to the very closest dissection and in the most
thoughtful and sensitive fashion. His book challenges the essential
meaning of the act of letter-writing which, in this age of texting
and instant communication, could not be more immediate in terms of
our own daily lives.a
--Eric Richards, Professor of History, Flinders University,
Australia
aThis is an agenda-setting book, and historians of immigration
would be well served by, if not taking up its entire methodology,
at least heeding its invocation to better incorporate the study of
the personal into their histories.a
--"History: Reviews of New Books"
aEssential reading for scholars studying and interpreting the
letters of immigrants, regardless of ethnic group.a
--"Journal of American Ethnic History"
In the era before airplanes and e-mail, how did immigrants keep
in touch with loved ones in their homelands, as well as preserve
links with pasts that were rooted in places from which they
voluntarily left?Regardless of literacy level, they wrote letters,
explains David A. Gerber in this path-breaking study of British
immigrants to the U.S. and Canada who wrote and received letters
during the nineteenth century.
Scholars have long used immigrant letters as a lens to examine
the experiences of immigrant groups and the communities they build
in their new homelands. Yet immigrants as individual letter writers
have not received significant attention; rather, their letters are
often used to add color to narratives informed by other types of
sources.
Authors of Their Lives analyzes the cycle of correspondence
between immigrants and their homelands, paying particular attention
to the role played by letters in reformulating relationships made
vulnerable by separation. Letters provided sources of continuity in
lives disrupted by movement across vast spaces that disrupted
personal identities, which depend on continuity between past and
present. Gerber reveals how ordinary artisans, farmers, factory
workers, and housewives engaged in correspondence that lasted for
years and addressed subjects of the most profound emotional and
practical significance.
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