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Crossing the Bridge: Growing Up Norwegian-American in Depression and
War, 1925-1946. By Earl A. Reitan. (Normal: Lone Oak Press, 1999.
Pp. 143. Paper, $12.95.) After earning his Ph.D. degree in History at the University of Illinois, Earl A. Reitan served from the 1950s until the 1990s as a distinguished member of the history faculty at Illinois State University (Normal). There he specialized in the history of modern Britain, with a scholarly focus on eighteenth-century finance, politics, and culture. In retirement, he jumped into our own times to peruse The Times of London each night on the Internet and to produce Tory Radicalism: Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and the Transformation of Modern Britain, 1979-1997 (1997).
The book under review encompasses a far earlier portion of the author's life, and it serves as a vivid evocation of what it was like to grow up the grandson of Norwegian immigrants (on his father's side) and of Danish immigrants (on his mother's side) during the era of the Great Depression and World...