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American Passage: The History of Ellis Island. By Vincent J. Cannato. (New York: HarperCollins, 2009. viii, 487 pp. $27.99, isbn 9780-06-074273-7.)
Given the central role of Ellis Island in the story of American immigration, it is surprising that Vincent J. Cannato's fine study, American Passage, is the first book-length history of the famous immigrant depot. Although 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island from 1892 to 1954, Cannato's protagonists are not the immigrants but the officials charged with implementing Congress's immigration statutes. The commissioners appointed to manage Ellis Island, such as William Williams and Robert Watchorn (himself an immigrant) thus loom large in Cannato's story. The presidents who appointed them, the cabinet secretaries and their deputies who managed them, and the commissioners' chief subordinates also play important supporting roles.
Yet American Passage is far more than a bureaucratic history. Cannato expertly intertwines...