The other half: the life of Jacob Riis and the world of immigrant America

Buk-Swienty, Tom

ISBN 10: 0393060233 / ISBN 13: 9780393060232

Published by W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2008

About this Item

xvi, 331 p., [32] p. of plates ill. 25 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. 307-310) and index. Box number: GR0059. ; 1st printing.

Seller Inventory # 1011675

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The other half: the life of Jacob Riis and the world of immigrant America
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co., New York
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393060233
• ISBN 13: 9780393060232
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Biography

About this title

Synopsis

Social reformer Jacob Riis made it impossible for Americans to look the other way; now this inspiring biography restores his greatness.

Drawing on previously unexamined diaries and letters, The Other Half marvelously re-creates the moving story of Jacob Riis, the legendary Progressive reformer and muckraking photographer. Born in 1849 in rural Denmark, Riis immigrated to America in 1870 following a devastating romantic breakup. Penniless and starving, Riis stumbled into journalism, eventually becoming a charismatic police reporter for the New York Tribune, where he befriended Theodore Roosevelt and witnessed firsthand the appalling tenement conditions of late nineteenth-century New York. His resulting exposé, How the Other Half Lives, was the first major American muckraking book. It brought Americans in touch with their lost humanity, establishing a precedent for Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Jane Addams, and Upton Sinclair. Described by Roosevelt as "the ideal American," Riis died in 1914, mourned by millions, a celebrated hero. Tom Buk-Swienty's long-awaited biography, a superb evocation of the muckraking era, is a compelling work, designed with 55 haunting images from Riis's own photographic oeuvre. 55 photographs

About the Authors

Tom Buk-Swienty, a Danish historian, has been the U.S. correspondent for several major Danish newspapers. A former Fellow at the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, he now teaches at the University of Southern Denmark.

Annette Buk-Swienty lives in southern Denmark with her husband, historian Tom Buk-Swienty, and their two children.