"Early in the twentieth century, drawing upon the hundreds of letters written to his father by immigrants from Mecklenburg, Germany, Johannes Gillhoff created the archetypal character of Jürnjakob Swehn: the upright, honest mench who personified the German immigrant. This farmer-hero--planting and harvesting his Iowa acres, joking with his neighbors during the snowy winters, building a church with his own hands--proved so popular with the German public that a million copies of Jürnjakob Swehn der Amerikafahrer are in print. Now for the first time this wise and endearing book is available in English." -- Page [4] cover.

This is the true-life story of Sethma Caspers who danced her way though pre-war Europe in 1937. From a stint in the chorus of the Moulin Rouge, Sethma went on to do command performances for Mussolini and King Farouk of Egypt, and was involved in a plot to kill Hitler. She reveals riveting anecdotes of her adventures in Hollywood after the war including a romance with Howard Hughes and her marriage to a wealthy Pasadena banker.

German Americans were one of the largest immigrant groups in the Civil War era, and they comprised nearly 10 percent of all Union troops. Yet little attention has been paid to their daily lives--both on the battlefield and on the home front--during the war. This collection of letters, written by German immigrants to friends and family back home, provides a new angle to our understanding of the Civil War experience and challenges some long-held assumptions about the immigrant experience at this time. Originally published in Germany in 2002, this collection contains more than three hundred letters written by seventy-eight German immigrants--men and women, soldiers and civilians, from the North and South. Their missives tell of battles and boredom, privation and profiteering, motives for enlistment and desertion and for avoiding involvement altogether. Although written by people with a variety of backgrounds, these letters describe the conflict from a distinctly German standpoint, the editors argue, casting doubt on the claim that the Civil War was the great melting pot that eradicated ethnic antagonisms.

New World View: Letters from a German Immigrant Family in Texas, 1854-1885 is a bilingual and annotated edition of a collection of letters written by a 19th century German immigrant family in Texas. The book, which includes a historical and biographical introduction, is a valuable source for scholars and students in various disciplines.