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Title details for The Great Departure by Tara Zahra - Available

The Great Departure

Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World

by Tara Zahra
Elizabeth Wiley
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
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2 of 2 copies available
In this riveting book, Tara Zahra takes the story of immigration that Americans know so well and weaves it into a larger story of emigration that we have long neglected. In this riveting book, Tara Zahra takes the story of immigration that Americans know so well and weaves it into a larger story of emigration that we have long neglected. With all the drama of a novel and all the nuance of history writing at its best, The Great Departure is a must-read. (Alison Johnson, Harvard University) In this spare, deeply researched, and unfailingly analytical book, Tara Zahra frees the great migration of Eastern Europeans to the West from romantic myth and dissects all its human and moral complexities. (Robert D. Kaplan, of In Europe's Shadow: A Journey Through Two Cold Wars in Romania and Beyond) With a combination of deft historical analysis, sparkling prose, and careful attention to individual stories, both poignant and instructive, Tara Zahra systematically deconstructs the myths surrounding emigration, escape, and deportation from Eastern Europe since the late nineteenth century. The Great Departure is brimming with important and suggestive lessons from the past for thinking about the worldwide dynamics of emigrants and refugees in our own day. (Norman M. Naimark, Stanford University) Meticulously researched, The Great Departure shows mass emigration from all sides, including individual stories of poverty and maltreatment-but also positive changes emigration brought to women . . . This book is equally relevant for Americans, showing why and how many of their ancestors left their countries, and for Europeans, confronted with an unprecedented wave of immigrants today. (Slavenka Drakulic, author of A Guided Tour through the Museum of Communism) About the Author Tara Zahra is a professor of Eastern European history at the University of Chicago and the author of two award-winning books, Kidnapped Souls and The Lost Children.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 21, 2016

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781681680170
      • File size: 303592 KB
      • Duration: 10:32:28

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      In a year when immigration is a major issue, this audiobook is especially timely and instructive. It tells the story of the greatest era of population movement the world has ever seen through personal stories and historical writing that tells why some people left and thrived and others went back to where they came from. Narrator Elizabeth Wiley approaches the material using a professorial tone and clipped diction that accentuates the history. She reads the facts well, pronounces the myriad Eastern European names accurately, and keeps the book moving. However, she doesn't provide enough emphasis on the book's personal and emotional components. While her delivery is authoritative, she misses making a connection with the listener. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      February 29, 2016
      Zahra (Kidnapped Souls), a MacArthur fellow and professor of modern European history at the University of Chicago, examines the political and demographic developments and policies that influenced and were influenced by mass population movements from Eastern Europe to the Americas between the 1880s and the early 21st century. She shows how migration sapped the demographic strength of some pre-WWI empires—for example, 3.5 million people emigrated from Austria-Hungary between 1876 and 1910—though remittances from such families to relatives back home also “expanded peasant landholdings, renovated churches, and provided relief in cases of natural disaster.” Zahra relates that during the interwar period, some newly established countries encouraged the emigration of ethnic minorities, while some Polish leaders planned what was euphemistically called an “evacuation” of their country’s sizable Jewish population to Madagascar. After WWII, she shows the ways migration policies articulated Cold War propaganda, as when one Polish publication told Polish workers who had sought work elsewhere that “whoever does not return ... sentences himself to a life of hopeless exile.” Zahra, an assiduous, multilingual researcher who mined sources in Czech, English, French, German, and Polish, is a graceful writer who has produced a very fine study.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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