Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War
    The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War
    The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War
    Audiobook13 hours

    The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War

    Written by David Laskin

    Narrated by Erik Synnestvedt

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    The United States has always been a nation of immigrants-never more so than in 1917 when the nation entered the First World War. Of the 2.5 million soldiers who fought with U.S. armed forces in the trenches of France and Belgium, some half a million-nearly one out of every five men-were immigrants. In The Long Way Home, David Laskin, author of the prizewinning history The Children's Blizzard, tells the stories of twelve of these immigrant heroes. Starting with their childhoods in Europe, Laskin unfolds the saga of their journeys to Ellis Island, their struggles to start over in the land of opportunity, and the ordeal of their return to Europe in uniform to fight-and win-a war that had already killed tens of millions.

    Three of these soldiers died on the battlefield; two won the Congressional Medal of Honor; all were transformed forever by their experiences in combat. It is a transformation that continues to be felt in the pride and pain and cherished memories of immigrant families that have long since assimilated.

    In tracing the lives of these twelve men, Laskin tells the story of an immigrant generation-a generation that streamed into this country in unprecedented numbers around the turn of the last century, that sweated to support their families through back-breaking physical labor, and that fought loyally for their adopted country on the battlefields of Belleau Wood, Soissons, St. Mihiel, and the Argonne forest.

    Based on stories, letters, and diaries passed on by descendants-as well as Laskin's personal interviews with two foreign-born Doughboys who were still alive at the time he was researching the book, The Long Way Home is a reverent work of history and a deeply moving evocation of the dreams and sacrifice at the heart of the American experience.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 23, 2010
    ISBN9781400184507
    Author

    David Laskin

    David Laskin is the author of The Children's Blizzard, winner of the Midwest Booksellers' Choice Award for nonfiction and the Washington State Book Award. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Smithsonian magazine. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

    Related to The Long Way Home

    Related audiobooks

    Wars & Military For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Bob Drury & Tom Clavin Forging Washington’s Army

      Mar 5, 2019

      With their 2018 book Valley Forge best-selling authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin turn their attention to one of the most underappreciated chapters in American history—the Continental Army’s 1777–78 transformation in that Pennsylvania winter camp. Drur

      6 min read

    • Article

      Lone Star Stories: The 10 Best Books About Texas

      Nov 13, 2020

      a great book about Texas should not only contain historical fact, it should give readers an impression of the Lone Star state—its scents, sights, and sensations—as well as what it feels like to be a human being of fragile flesh and blood in that imme

      3 min read

    • Article

      INSPIRED BY… The New Year

      Jan 18, 2023

      INSPIRED BY… The New Year
      1 min read

    • Article

      Regimental Newspaper

      Feb 14, 2023

      Regimental Newspaper
      1 min read

    • Article

      Starter Villain

      Sep 6, 2023

      Starter Villain
      2 min read

    • Article

      Sherman In The Balance

      Dec 15, 2020

      Sherman In The Balance
      9 min read

    • Article

      Bismarck’s War

      Jul 6, 2023

      Bismarck’s War
      1 min read

    • Article

      A View Of Mount Suribachi

      Feb 20, 2020

      A View Of Mount Suribachi
      3 min read

    • Article

      Mussolini Rise Of Fascism

      Dec 23, 2021

      Mussolini Rise Of Fascism
      14 min read

    • Article

      The Jag File

      Feb 4, 2022

      The Jag File
      3 min read

    • Article

      Breaking the Hindeburg Line

      Oct 29, 2021

      Breaking the Hindeburg Line
      6 min read

    • Article

      'My Military Relations Are My Heroes'

      May 2, 2023

      Service runs deep in the blood of Martyn Guy’s family. His relatives have engaged in key moments in military history, and served alongside legendary admirals and a future field marshal. Martyn lives in Herefordshire, and is a retired Royal Air Force

      5 min read

    • Article

      Q&A YOU ASK, WE ANSWER

      May 12, 2022

      Q&A YOU ASK, WE ANSWER
      8 min read

    • Article

      'Ted Was A Soldier And Bohemian Adventurer'

      Jan 10, 2023

      The First World War brought about huge social change in Britain, including female emancipation, increased workers’ rights and major scientific advances. Soldiers returned from the Western Front changed men, some questioning the conventional stricture

      3 min read

    • Article

      Interview Matthew Naylor The Legacy of World War I

      Sep 4, 2018

      Matthew Naylor, president and CEO of the National World War I Museum and Memorial [theworldwar.org] in Kansas City, Mo., also sits on the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission [worldwar1centennial.org], which since its establishment by Congress in 2

      4 min read

    • Article

      ‘May Braved danger In Shanghai’

      Oct 18, 2022

      Between the early 1800s and the mid-20th century, thousands of European Christians chose to spread the faith in China as missionaries. However, mortality rates were high due to disease, living conditions could be primitive, and learning the language

      2 min read

    • Article

      Churchill’s Mommie Dearest

      Jun 2, 2021

      Jennie Churchill, Winston’s American mother, died shockingly prematurely 100 years ago this month, on 29th June 1921, after a fall downstairs. She was 67 and in the prime of life, newly married to a man 20 years younger and had finally found a way of

      5 min read

    • Article

      Lt. Col. Joseph Massaro

      Jul 30, 2021

      Lt. Col. Joseph Massaro
      5 min read

    • Article

      Big Shots

      Oct 6, 2020

      Big Shots
      1 min read

    • Article

      Letter Of The Month

      Jul 8, 2021

      Letter Of The Month
      4 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Apr 15, 2021

      Letters
      4 min read

    • Article

      Ernest ‘Smokey’ Smith

      Jan 19, 2023

      Ernest ‘Smokey’ Smith
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Long Way Home

    4/5

    6 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I saw Ellis Island in the title and picked up this book because my grandfather arrived at Ellis Island in 1910. He was 25, single, and his papers said his last residence was Avellino Italy. I thought it might shed some light on what he went through when he came to America.So I expected that this was going to be the story of how immigrants who arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s became assimilated into American society. Laskin certainly does cover that subject, and covers it very well. However, in addition to the specific stories of 12 different immigrants he follows from their birthplaces in various countries, their immigration and landing at Ellis Island, their first jobs in America, and then their participation in WWI, to their return to the US, their later lives and their deaths, he gives us a detailed overview of US immigration policy, and the role and influence of immigrants in US society.As he expounds on the immigration issues, one can't help but draw comparisons to the debate raging in our country today. In 1914, one in three people living in the US was an immigrant or child of an immigrant. They did not learn English, they stayed in small enclaves of people who spoke their language, worshiped their same god, ate the same food. It was not until the US entered the war, and these men joined the armed services (almost all of them willingly) to fight for the US against what was for some of them their native countries, that they became not "kikes, jews, wops, & polacks," but Yanks one and all. The bonding that took place on the battlefield transcended language, religion, and customs; the friendships formed lasted lifetimes.By following the lives of these twelve men and their families (4 Italians, 1 Norwegian, 1 Irish, and the others Slavs and Jews from Russia and the Russian Pale) he gives us a picture of hardship, loyalty, and determination. We get a history lesson and a humanity lesson. I think he sums it up toward the end: The only great thing about the Great War was the scale. So why did they fight? The question was especially fraught for America's immigrant soldiers. To fight for your own country is an inescapable part of the social contract. In exchange for the benefits of a secure civil society, we offer our bodies and, if need be our lives, in time of war. But the foreign born were asked, indeed forced to serve without having executed the social contract in full. In the streets of America, they were aliens, but in no man's land they were expected to fight as fervently as native born Americans. And for the most part, they did. It was that loyalty in action that changed everything. They righted the imbalance of the social contract not by protesting, but paradoxically by submitting. Their pride in serving won them, and their families, the status they could never have gained without the war. In a war remembered more for senseless slaughter than for courage, the service of the foreign born shines. Nearly a hundred years later, it's one of the few things about the great war that still does.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I wanted to to like this book, the war stories are right up my alley, but I just found the writing a struggle and couldn't get through the book. The writing just dragged, but if you can get through that, the people themselves are interesting.Audiobook note : ok narrator, a bit droll (maybe that's what made the book drag)
    • 4/5
      This book, by the guy who wrote The Children's Blizzard (which I read 9 Aug 2005), is a carefuly researched account of 12 men who were immigrants to the USA or sons of immigrants, and their time in the old country, how they came to come to this country, and their experiences in the Great War. I found the account of their youth, their experiences in arriving in the US, and what they did after the war full of interest. The account of the experiences on the battlefields of Europe did tend to pall for me, since some of it was deduced rather than actual--to be expected since this book was written long after all had died, though the author did actually talk to at least one of the men. The book causes one to shudder over the senselessness of way the war was carried on, though the men who did the fighting could not be blamed for that in any way. So while not unfailingly intriguing for me, on balance and after I had finished the book, I found I was glad I read it and it carries vivid memories for me--including a poignant account of Hutterites who refused to fight and underwent a tortured time till the war was over.
    • 5/5
      I enjoy reading history books that focus on real people, and tell stories from viewpoints not usually found in textbooks. David Laskin has done just that in The Long Way Home. He tells the story of a dozen World War I veterans – immigrants all -- who served their adopted country before becoming citizens. Like today, many Americans of that age looked upon immigrants with some disdain, doubting that they had what it took to serve in the American military. After all, many of the dozen characters David Laskin focuses on in The Long Way Home came to America specifically to avoid military service in their home countries. All twelve enlisted or were drafted into the US Army or Marines to serve overseas in the Great War -- and they all proved the doubters wrong. Some were killed in action, some won the Congressional Medal of Honor. All served bravely.David Laskin tells their stories with heart, sensitivity and respect, relying primarily on historical research, genealogical fact-finding and interviews with the men’s descendants – and, in two cases, with the veterans themselves. The Long Way Home is an amazing story, start to finish. Readers will be amazed at the obstacles these men overcame simply in getting to America – and the prejudice and hardships with which they had to contend once they arrived. I read and enjoyed one of Mr. Laskin’s other books, The Children’s Blizzard. I liked The Long Way Home even more. I can strongly recommend this book, even for readers who don’t often seek out war histories. The Long Way Home is much more than that.