A leader in her interdisciplinary trade, Stacy D. Fahrenthold reveals the full value of adopting a global perspective on the modern Middle East by way of a meticulous study of Syrian/Palestinian migrants to the Northeast United States and beyond. In her second monograph on migration from the Ottoman Empire, Fahrenthold combs local and regional newspapers to reveal a new perspective to the intercontinental channels of commerce that made US industrialization a global story. By offering a bottom-up story of the dynamic and expanding (if politically and socially diverse) Syrian American population in the rapidly industrializing United States, Fahrenthold makes a significant contribution to several genres of scholarship.

The focus is overwhelmingly on the urban working classes toiling to maintain their extended families in the miserable conditions of the industry towns of Massachusetts, Maine, and New York. Drawing from invaluable local sources, Fahrenthold exposes the complexity of the Syrian Mahjar (Arabic for Diaspora) story by finding new socio-economic actors to a story once privileging the grandee families who built commercial empires, the men who serviced the economic expansion in the Americas as “peddlers” (door-to-door salesmen) or owners of small convenience stores. In contrast, Fahrenthold reveals a rich subdivision of the Syrian American garment workers and weavers who serviced the textile trade their Syrian/Lebanese capitalist bosses dominated. As such, this fabulously researched book draws attention to untold contributions that Syrian women gave to this major sector in the US industrial economy.