Children are the largely neglected players in the great drama of American immigration. In one of history's most remarkable movements of people across national borders, almost twenty-five million immigrants came to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—from Mexico, Japan, and Canada as well as the more common embarkation points of southern and eastern Europe. Many of them were children. Together with the American-born children of immigrants, they made up a significant part of turn-of-the-century U.S. society. Small Strangers recounts and interprets their varied experiences to illustrate how immigration, urbanization, and industrialization—all related processes—molded modern America. Growing up in crowded tenements, insular mill towns, rural ethnic enclaves, or middle-class homes, as they came of age they found themselves increasingly caught between Old World expectations and New World demands. The encounters of these children with ethnic heritage, American values, and mass culture helped shape the twentieth century in a United States still known symbolically around the world as a nation of immigrants.

"Small Strangers fills a gap. . . . An excellent addition to any college level collection strong in immigrant studies." - California Bookwatch

"Small Strangers captures the essence of what it meant to be one of the many children whose families immigrated to America around the turn of the last century. . . . Small Strangers manages to do an excellent job of telling their stories and shedding light on their lives and their contributions to building America." - Virginia Quarterly Review

"Highlight[s] . . . experiences of individuals while still describing . . . structural similarities in the experiences of . . . a broad range of ethnicities." - H-Childhood

"Stimulating study . . . fine insights concerning the effects that immigration had on American and its varied citizenry." - Jewish Exponent

"This slim, accessible volume presents a concise history of the immigrant generation that came of age in late nineteenth-and early twentieth century America." - Journal of American History

"A book that smoothly synthesizes several decades' worth of scholarship. . . . Klapper draws an interesting contrast between the 'public and collective' child-rearing practices of working-class families and the 'private and individual' ones of native-born white Americans. . . . Readers will appreciate Klapper's presentation of anecdotes from a refreshingly broad range of geographic locales and ethnic groups." - Journal of American Ethnic History