For most of New York’s early history, Ellis Island had been an obscure little island that barely held itself above high tide. Today, the small island stands alongside Plymouth Rock in our nation’s founding mythology as the place where many of our ancestors first touched American soil. Ellis Island’s heyday—from 1892 to 1924—coincided with the greatest mass migration of individuals the world has ever seen, with some twelve million immigrants inspected at its gates. In American Passage, Vincent J. Cannato masterfully illuminates the story of Ellis Island from the days when it hosted pirate hangings witnessed by thousands of New Yorkers in the nineteenth century, to the turn of the twentieth century when massive migrations sparked fierce debate and hopeful new immigrants often encountered corruption, harsh conditions, and political scheming. American Passage captures a time and place unparalleled in American immigration and history, and articulates the dramatic and bittersweet accounts of the immigrants, officials, interpreters, and social reformers who all play an important role in Ellis Island’s chronicle. Cannato traces the politics, prejudices, and ideologies that surrounded the great immigration debate, to the shift from immigration to detention of aliens during World War II and the Cold War, all the way to the rebirth of the Island as a national monument. In this sweeping, often heart-wrenching epic, Cannato reveals that the history of Ellis Island is ultimately the story of what it means to be an American.
“By bringing us the inspiring and sometimes unsettling tales of Ellis Island, Vincent Cannato’s American Passage helps us understand who we are as a nation.” —Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein: His Life and Universe and Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
“Reading Vincent Cannato’s American Passage was an amazing journey into our nation’s immigrant past.” Douglas Brinkley, author of The Great Deluge
“Anyone with a stake or even a fleeting interest in the overhaul of the nation’s immigration policies should read Vincent J. Cannato’s American Passage: The History of Ellis Island.” —Sam Roberts, New York Times
“[A]nyone with an interest in immigration or progressive politics will want to consult it.” —Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs
“Mr. Cannato’s writing is vivid and accessible, and his approach is admirably even-handed.” —Terry Golway, Wall Street Journal