Journey into America

2010-06-01

Author: Akbar Ahmed

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

ISBN: 9780815704409

Category: Social Science

Page: 546

View: 850

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Nearly seven million Muslims live in the United States today, and their relations with non-Muslims are strained. Many Americans associate Islam with figures such as Osama bin Laden, and they worry about “homegrown terrorists.” To shed light on this increasingly important religious group and counter mutual distrust, renowned scholar Akbar Ahmed conducted the most comprehensive study to date of the American Muslim community. Journey into America explores and documents how Muslims are fitting into U.S. society, placing their experience within the larger context of American identity. This eye-opening book also offers a fresh and insightful perspective on American history and society. Following up on his critically acclaimed Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization (Brookings, 2007), Ahmed and his team of young researchers traveled for a year through more than seventyfive cities across the United States—from New York City to Salt Lake City; from Las Vegas to Miami; from the large Muslim enclave in Dearborn, Michigan, to small, predominantly white towns like Arab, Alabama. They visited homes, schools, and over one hundred mosques to discover what Muslims are thinking and how they are living every day in America. In this unprecedented exploration of American Muslim communities, Ahmed asked challenging questions: Can we expect an increase in homegrown terrorism? How do American Muslims ofArab descent differ from those of other origins (for example, Somalia or South Asia)? Why are so many white women converting to Islam? How can a Muslim become accepted fully as an “American,” and what does that mean? He also delves into the potentially sticky area of relations with other religions. For example, is there truly a deep divide between Muslims and Jews in America? And how well do Muslims get along with other religious groups, such as Mormons in Utah? Journey into America is equal parts anthropological research, listening tour, and travelogue. Whereas Ahmed’s previous book took the reader into homes, schools, and mosques in the Muslim world, his new quest takes us into the heart of America and its Muslim communities. It is absolutely essential reading for anyone trying to make sense of America today.

Nikita Khrushchev's Journey into America

2019-05-31

Author: Lawrence J. Nelson

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

ISBN: 9780700627882

Category: History

Page: 296

View: 259

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When Nikita Khrushchev toured America in 1959 —the first Russian leader ever to set foot in the Western Hemisphere, let alone the United States—the country was enjoying a period of unprecedented prosperity, just as the Cold War and the possibility of thermonuclear annihilation were causing widespread, bone-deep dread throughout the land. This book for the first time fully explores Khrushchev’s journey as a reflection of a critical moment in US life. Deeply researched and deftly written, Nikita Khrushchev’s Journey into America captures that moment in all its complexity and implications, describing not only the Russian leader’s occasionally surreal itinerary (a tantrum at being denied entry into Disneyland, for instance, or a near-riot upon wandering into a grocery store in San Francisco) but also the tenor of the crowds and the country along the way. Following Khrushchev from his arrival in the nation’s capital to the eerily silent greeting of hundreds of thousands of spectators to his tickling of pigs, kissing of babies, and glad-handing of union workers and farm laborers in rural Iowa to his encounter with President Dwight Eisenhower, Nelson and Schoenbachler’s work offers glimpses of the clash between a true believer in the Soviet system and the icons of capitalism and visions of prosperity he repeatedly confronted on his trip. At the same time the book shows us the American people of the time coming to terms with who they were even as they confronted the embodiment of everything they believed they weren’t: atheistic, socialist, and ideological. As the narrative unfolds, Khrushchev’s visit can be understood as easily the most democratic event of the Cold War, one that laid bare the depth of ideological commitments on both sides of the geopolitical divide as well as the key role of religion in shaping Americans’ reactions to the Soviet leader and to the Cold War itself.

Journey Through America

2012-08-30

Author: Wolfgang Koeppen

Publisher: Berghahn Books

ISBN: 9780857454379

Category: Travel

Page: 172

View: 748

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Amerikafahrt by Wolfgang Koeppen is a masterpiece of observation, analysis, and writing, based on his 1958 trip to the United States. A major twentieth-century German writer, Koeppen presents a vivid and fascinating portrait of the US in the late 1950s: its major cities, its literary culture, its troubled race relations, its multi-culturalism and its vast loneliness, a motif drawn, in part, from Kafka's Amerika. A modernist travelogue, the text employs symbol, myth, and image, as if Koeppen sought to answer de Tocqueville's questions in the manner of Joyce and Kafka. Journey through America is also a meditation on America, intended for a German audience and mindful of the destiny of postwar Europe under many Americanizing influences.

Journey to America

2022-07-24

Author: Manny Quijada

Publisher: MJ Copywriting

ISBN:

Category: Biography & Autobiography

Page: 308

View: 840

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We all make important, and crucial decisions at some point in life. Some decisions can truly be life changing. A month after I turned sixteen years old, I was given the opportunity to leave my country, and go north in the continent to the great United States of America. It was not an easy thing to do by any means, neither was it to decide over. After seeking God’s answer in prayer for a few days, I decided to leave my known life behind to venture into the unknown, trusting in God alone to make it safe to my destination. As I made the decision to leave my country, that also included leaving behind the most beautiful girl I had known. I was risking my life in many ways trying to reach the “Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave” with only one purpose in my heart. I wanted nothing more than to become a successful man in order to have something to offer to the girl I considered to be the love of my life. This was my one, and only reason for leaving my country. However, as the day for my departure approached, the strange feeling that I was going to end up with a broken heart at the end of it all became very overwhelming each day, and even more so during the entire journey. Although I hoped that was not going to be the case, I wanted God’s will to be done above all else. I believed that God had a reason for taking me away from her, my country, my friends and family at the time He did. If He did not want me to go to America the way I did, He simply would have said so when I asked if He wanted me to go. It took twenty-five days from the day I left my home in El Salvador until the day I arrived at my new home in Orange County, California. There were a number of dangers that I faced during a three week period, going across four different countries, traveling for more than three thousand miles. While my faith was tested in different ways each day, my mind, and my body were also put to the test in more ways than I expected. It all began on the eleventh day of February in the year two thousand and two. A group of fifteen individuals full of hope, and dreams of a better future decided to begin a journey that would forever change their lives. Although unique, my story is not the only one for there are millions more that have come before, and after me. This, however, is the story of my Journey to America.

Journey to America

2015-08

Author: Danny Kravitz

Publisher: Capstone

ISBN: 9781491441268

Category: Juvenile Nonfiction

Page: 49

View: 812

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"Explores the waves of immigration into the United States in the early 1900s"--

The Way of Saint James: Journey to America

2019-07-15

Author: Eugene Sierras

Publisher: Trafford Publishing

ISBN: 9781490796178

Category: Fiction

Page: 346

View: 544

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The Way of Saint James: Journey to America is the story about a family with origins in Spain and their journey to America, including the United States of America and Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos (the United Mexican States). The story focuses on the lives of two men, Mihail Gurevich and Baltazar de la Vega. Their families’ background, history, and the lives they led in Europe under conditions that motivated both men to immigrate to America to seek a better life are told. Both men departed when they were young and overcame several obstacles with a resolve to achieve a life in which they could live in freedom and prosper with hard work and dedication toward family. Both individuals were products of not only their place of birth but also the societies in which they lived. Both left what could have been a life not confronted by danger and the unknown. Both chose to venture forth, accepting whatever challenges and risks life may present to them. Their journeys occurred against the larger history of Europe in which they lived. Their journey is similar to the mystical El Camino de Santiago, the Way of Saint James, which served as a metaphor of their quest.

Matej's Journey to America

2002-11-19

Author: Donald F. Chmelka

Publisher: Author House

ISBN: 9781403339294

Category: Biography & Autobiography

Page: 1074

View: 654

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Matej's Journey to America is a creative-nonfiction chronicle exploring the forces that drove our immigrant ancestors to new lands. After Adam and Eve's eviction from Eden, man slowly scattered with a great dispersion occurring about 2700 BC as the Lord confounded the tongues of presumptuous Babylonians building a tower to heaven. Among the afflicted was an Aryan slave named Chmelka who was growing hops (chmel in the new Slavic language) to flavor beer for his Semitic masters. As the Slavs fled northward toward unknown Czech lands, other tribes migrated in all directions. According to The Book of Mormon, the righteous Jared took a Semitic clan from Babel across the mountains, deserts and oceans to a New World . . . later named America. Another Semitic clan that passed through Babylon 850 years later included a young Abraham, destined to be the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He introduced the concept of a single God revered by all his religious descendants, but despite their many commonalties, each of these three great religions seem convinced it has the only correct formula for salvation, justifying incredible atrocities with God always on its side. The descendants of the first Chmelka struggled as great civilizations developed and fell through the turmoil and bloodshed of the Dark Ages. Marco Polo awakened Europe in the late 13th century to the riches of the Far East, giving rise to explorers like Christopher Columbus who stumbled onto the North American Continent in 1492. The Protestant Reformation began to divide the Holy Roman Empire at the time, adding to the bloodshed as Austria, Prussia and France fought for domination in Europe. Meanwhile, Spain, England and France were colonizing and competing for control in the New World that was becoming home to an increasing number of European emigrants looking for a better life. The American Colonies fought for independence and then began to absorb all lands from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Thomas Jefferson purchased the immense Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803, after which mountain men opened the West to homesteaders, miners and ranchers. My great-great-grandfather Matej was born as the Rocky Mountain fur trade boomed in 1825, and grew up on a 13-acre farm in Moravia where the Chmelkas had been serfs since Charlemagne was crowned the first Holy Roman Emperor a millennium earlier. Matej became a Dragoon in the Austrian Imperial Army and helped put down a revolution in Prague in 1848 the year gold was discovered in California but war spread and life worsened for European peasants. Gold, homesteads and wild Texas longhorns free for the taking lured thousands of oppressed Europeans to America on steamships and railroads now making long-distance travel feasible. After Prussia defeated the Austrian Empire including Bohemia and Moravia and then France, Matej's family escaped its misery and immigrated to Nebraska in 1871. They found a difficult life with grasshoppers, drought, hail and fires destroying crops . . . spurring Matej's fourteen-year-old son to join a Texas cattle drive and then dodge Indians and gunfighters for fourteen years in the Wild West. New technologies in farm equipment, transportation and communications made America the envy of the world in 1902 when Matej died and was buried near the prairie church he helped build. Matej's Journey to America honors him and his fellow immigrants ordinary men and women generally lost in history for the legacies and opportunities they gave us in our great land of freedom.

Journey into Europe

2018-02-27

Author: Akbar Ahmed

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

ISBN: 9780815727590

Category: Political Science

Page: 595

View: 856

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An unprecedented, richly, detailed, and clear-eyed exploration of Islam in European history and civilization Tensions over Islam were escalating in Europe even before 9/11. Since then, repeated episodes of terrorism together with the refugee crisis have dramatically increased the divide between the majority population and Muslim communities, pushing the debate well beyond concerns over language and female dress. Meanwhile, the parallel rise of right-wing, nationalist political parties throughout the continent, often espousing anti-Muslim rhetoric, has shaken the foundation of the European Union to its very core. Many Europeans see Islam as an alien, even barbaric force that threatens to overwhelm them and their societies. Muslims, by contrast, struggle to find a place in Europe in the face of increasing intolerance. In tandem, anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination cause many on the continent to feel unwelcome in their European homes. Akbar Ahmed, an internationally renowned Islamic scholar, traveled across Europe over the course of four years with his team of researchers and interviewed Muslims and non-Muslims from all walks of life to investigate questions of Islam, immigration, and identity. They spoke with some of Europe's most prominent figures, including presidents and prime ministers, archbishops, chief rabbis, grand muftis, heads of right-wing parties, and everyday Europeans from a variety of backgrounds. Their findings reveal a story of the place of Islam in European history and civilization that is more interwoven and complex than the reader might imagine, while exposing both the misunderstandings and the opportunities for Europe and its Muslim communities to improve their relationship. Along with an analysis of what has gone wrong and why, this urgent study, the fourth in a quartet examining relations between the West and the Muslim world, features recommendations for promoting integration and pluralism in the twenty-first century.

Displaced Persons: an Immigrant Journey to America

2014-03-10

Author: Richard E. Fuerch

Publisher: AuthorHouse

ISBN: 9781491870495

Category: Family & Relationships

Page: 186

View: 603

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After growing up and hearing many stories about his parents experiences in Europe before, during and after World War II, Richard E. Fuerch decided that he had to preserve these stories for his family. He took on the task of interviewing his parents, taking elaborate notes and weaving a narrative from what he had assembled. The initial product was a forty page binder comprising a brief retelling of the stories that were told to him. After many years, he decided to put it all together in the form of a book. "This is the story of my parents; their family history in Poland and Czechoslovakia; their survival of World War II; their refugee experience in the wake of the devastation of the war, and their eventual immigration from war torn Europe, to the United States of America." "I wrote this book because I wanted to document their incredible story for my siblings, my children and my niece and nephew. While their's was an oft repeated, commonly experienced voyage through life, it is one that is rarely told, especially within the context of the horrible tragedy that was World War II."

An Arab's Journey to Colonial Spanish America

2011-09-15

Author: Caesar E. Farah

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

ISBN: 9780815650621

Category: History

Page: 151

View: 556

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In 1905, the Jesuit scholar Antûn Rabbât discovered the writings of Elias-al- Mûsili in a Jacobite diocese in Aleppo, Syria. al- Mûsili, a seventeenth century Arab and priest of the Chaldean Church, traveled widely across colonial Spanish America becoming the first person to visit the Americas from Baghdad. Rabbât transcribed into Arabic and published those portions relating to al-Mûsili’s travels and Middle Eastern historian Caesar Farah is the first to make these writings available in English translation.

Journey to America

2020-07-21

Author: Sonia Levitin

Publisher: Aladdin

ISBN: 9781534464636

Category: Juvenile Fiction

Page: 224

View: 898

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A beautifully repackaged 50th anniversary edition of Sonia Levitin’s powerful classic story about a young Jewish girl forced to flee her home, winner of the National Jewish Book Award. In 1938, Lisa Platt and her family know something dangerous is happening in Germany. Lately, there have been more and more restrictions for Jews: yellow stars they have to wear, schools they cannot attend, things they are forbidden to do. When their neighbors are arrested for petty reasons, the Platts realize they have to escape. Forbidden to bring money or possessions out of the country, Lisa’s father secretly leaves for America, planning to work until he can send for them. But when conditions in Germany worsen, Lisa, her mother, and her sisters flee to Switzerland to wait, surviving on what little they have in a continent hurtling toward war. Inspired by Sonia Levitin’s own experience of fleeing Germany as a child, this moving novel chronicles one family’s bravery in the face of aggression and apathy.

My Improbable Journey to America

2021-11-08

Author: Jarvis Sankalan Mengarpuan

Publisher: Page Publishing Inc

ISBN: 9781662421495

Category: Biography & Autobiography

Page: 252

View: 682

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Author Sankalan was in the sixth grade when his guardians threw him out of their government-owned house in the picturesque community of Germany, Kakata, Liberia, West Africa. Why? Because he went to borrow a uniform from his friend to sit for the Liberian Government national examinations designed for sixth, ninth, and twelfth graders in the sixties and seventies. Booker Washington Institute (BWI) campus was the site of the exams. The old uniform he had showed his naked anatomy in public, which was not only humiliating but embarrassingly inappropriate in such public arena. How did he continue school as an independent homeless youth in his home country, Liberia? What difficult circumstances did he experience in Liberia during his formative years in the quest of education? What propelled him to undertake this incredible journey to the United States of America, a country in which many Africans or Liberians believe that ‘Money grows on trees,’ a country in which people are territorial by nature and protective of their personal space, a country in which the culture values are diametrically opposed to the African or Liberian way of life? How did he maintain his moral integrity to his family, after he was pressured to engage in an illegal marriage proposal to obtain permanent resident status (Green Card) in his first year in the America? And how did he successfully complete his educational journey with perseverance despite insurmountable problems along his path in the US? Answers to these questions are chronicled in this riveting account of an intrepid Liberian in his book: My Improbable Journey to America—A Memoir of Reflections.

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