This book is a comparative study of similar people in different environments at the same point in time. The six chapters discuss why eastern European Jews came to London and New York, the differences and similarities in the settlement process, the schools they found and the use they made of them, and the mobility they achieved. The study concludes that individual and societal conditions made it impossible for more than a small proportion of the generation that grew to maturity before the first world war to use schooling as a road to the middle class. In general, the Russian and Polish Jews...

This book is a case study of a unique educational institution. For 130 years, the growth and development of Baruch College has paralleled and reflected changes in New York City. Berrol shows how the school, which was started in 1847 as a Free Academy to provide training for the clerks and professionals needed in a growing mercantile city, survived through several stages of development to emerge as an independent college in 1968. She contends that this survival is due, in no small measure, to the college's ability to meet the needs of New York City as it grew from mid-19th century...