RaveThe Women\'s Review of BooksSzejnert has a style distinguished by pithy realism, deft plotting via recurring details and motifs, and deep dives for the not-so-ordinary words and deeds of ostensibly \'ordinary people\' ... Szejnert resists any such hierarchy or objectification in presenting her human subjects ... Generally evenhanded, Szejnert may cede a bit more space and detail in Ellis Island to those whose professional training or empathetic character moved them to treat the dirty, seemingly uncivilized arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe as fellow human beings, Americans in the making ... Far from reprising traditional accounts of the early-twentieth-century “American immigrant experience,” Szejnert’s Ellis Island: A People’s History leads us down as many surprising, sobering paths as the corridors connecting almost all of the buildings on the island... Guided by a keenly perceptive, curious foreigner, we emerge from her reportage with vivid, individualized memories of newcomers’ hardships endured, nativist fears aroused, official injustices carried, and the wide range of goodwill efforts invested in the processing and treatment of the more than sixteen million people who risked everything to resettle in the United States.
