Polish American History before 1939: Polish-American History from 1854 to 2004, Volume 1

The history of private lives of the first and second generations of Polish immigrants in the United States is viewed from the perspective of migrants themselves. What did the migrants do? How did they behave? How protagonists (men, women, children) with their own words presented their experience? Their experience is compared with one of the other groups. The book discusses migration processes, formation of neighborhoods, experiences at work, daily and family lives, functioning of parishes and tensions related to it, and construction of peoples identities and their constant reformulations. Migrants created mutual-aid societies, which played not only economic, but also ideological and political roles. Experiences of immigrants children at home and at school are presented, mostly in their own words and from their own perspective. Cultural activities reflect constant changes of groups self-identity.

The book also depicts the relations between the Polish migrants and members of other ethnic groups in the streets, public spaces, politics, and within the Catholic church. People lived in pluri-cultural, culturally diverse, contexts, and thus relations with the others were complex. The panorama ended in the year 1939, when after the Great Depression, the group entered into a new period of transformation during the war.