"Then I Discovered That the Immigrants Were American History"

"But his best-known work, 'The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People,' which won the 1952 Pulitzer for history, was aimed at an audience of general readers in making his case that immigration—more than the frontier experience, or any other episode in its past—was the continuing, defining event of American history. Dispensing with footnotes and writing in a lyrical style, Dr. Handlin emphasized the common threads in the experiences of the 30 million immigrants who poured into American cities between 1820 and the turn of the century. Regardless of nationality, religion, race or ethnicity, he wrote, the common experience was wrenching hardship, alienation and a gradual Americanization that changed America as much as it changed the newcomers."

In The New York Times, Paul Vitello reports the death of Oscar Handlin.