From Many Lands

THERE are few more qualified and sympathetic interpreters of the newer immigrant strains than Louis Adamic, who was himself born in Yugoslavia, who has experienced a good deal of the unsheltered sides of American life, and who is a gifted storyteller, with a warm interest in human beings and their backgrounds. Facts that might seem faraway and unreal if presented in impersonal general terms become dramatic and fascinating when they find expression in the living characters through whom Mr. Adamic conveys the hope and pathos, the achievement and the heartbreak, that are all blended together in the vast pageant of the stranger within the American gates. The personal stories which constitute the greater part of the book read in many cases like excerpts from a novel. The jews are represented by a famous dermatologist, the Finns by the sturdy Oregon farmer, John Starkku, who Americanized his name to Stark and then began to sign his letters Starkku after Finland made its heroic stand against the Soviet invasion. There are Steve Maleski, the Pole who found a place on the land in America, and the brilliant Tashjian family, fugitives from Turkish massacres in Armenia. All in all, here is an effective cross-section of non-Anglo-Saxon America, sincere and moving without sentimentality.