What I'm reading...

Daughters of the Shtetl.
It caught the attention of the customs official, who once I started explaining what the book was about, was quick to move me on through...It's a book my younger brother was evidently assigned for a class and accordingly marked about 4 paragraphs and certainly didn't read any of it apart from the first 2 pages (this leads me to believe this is a genetic tendency and not one I can be personally held responsible for). It's a graduate study focused on Jewish Russian (from the Pale generally) immigrants who came to the United States and then began working as laborers, frequently garment workers. The main flaw in the book is its attempt to bring some perspective by discussing almost exclusively Italian workers - I recognize the laziness - she should have done a more comprehensive survey and looked at immigrant groups who arrived at different times but in similar waves and with similar levels of unskilled employment and compared those. However, it is very engaging and written in a way that makes what would otherwise be tedious a very good read, even hard to put down.