These letters, written in part by the daughter of Harriet Jacobs, offer profound insight into a hidden world--the private lives of genteel African American women in the late nineteenth century.

This captivating story of the Jewish community in Johnstown, Pennsylvania reveals a pattern of adaptation to American life surprisingly different from that followed by Jewish immigrants to metropolitan areas. Although four-fifths of Jewish immigrants did settle in major cities, another fifth created small-town communities like the one described here by Ewa Morawska. Rather than climbing up the mainstream education and occupational success ladder, the Jewish Johnstowners created in the local economy a tightly knit ethnic entrepreneurial niche and pursued within it their main life goals: achieving a satisfactory standard of living against the recurrent slumps in local mills and coal mines and enjoying the company of their fellow congregants. Rather than secularizing and diversifying their communal life, as did Jewish immigrants to larger cities, they devoted their energies to creating and maintaining an inclusive, multipurpose religious congregation. Morawska begins with an extensive examination of Jewish life in the Eastern European regions from which most of Johnstown's immigrants came, tracing features of culture and social relations that they brought with them to America. After detailing the process by which migration from Eastern Europe occurred, Morawska takes up the social organization of Johnstown, the place of Jews in that social order, the transformation of Jewish social life in the city, and relations between Jews and non-Jews. The resulting work will appeal simultaneously to students of American history, of American social life, of immigration, and of Jewish experience, as well as to the general reader interested in any of these topics.

Once a Native American hunting ground, the industrial melting pot of Monessen, in western Pennsylvania, rises over a horseshoe bend in the Monongahela River. Established in 1898, this powerhouse town boomed for close to 60 years, producing vast amounts of steel and other crucial industrial materials. Known for its cultural diversity, Monessen's predominantly immigrant population-with the highest naturalization rate in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century-and the vibrant neighborhoods they established were entirely sustained by the local mills. The battles for decent pay, job protection, benefits, and an 8-hour day kindled fiercely for decades until Monessen and towns like it in the Monongahela Valley gave the average person a dignity denied them for centuries: decent pay for decent work. Families thrived. Children went to college. It was the American dream. Then, neighborhoods began to unravel, foreign imports stole jobs, and finally the mills, the only support of the town, closed. Demonstrating their unyielding spirit, Monessen residents have struggled to fight for the recovery and rebirth of their hometown. In this new history, Monessen: A Typical Steel Country Town, informative narrative highlights the rapid expansion and gradual demise of a society built almost solely on its industrial endeavors and recounts how a disjointed populace has come together to restore their proud community. Over 100 striking photographs depict the dominating presence of the mills, the quiet faces of the people who toiled there, scenes of daily life, and memorable events through the years, as well as the dramatic changes that have marked Monessen's unique history.