| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 96.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 96.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Other Half: The Life of Jacob Riis and the World of Immigrant America. By Tom Buk-Swienty, trans. Annette Buk-Swienty. (New York: Norton, 2008. xviii, 331 pp. $27.95, ISBN 978-0-393-06023-2.)
In 1989, the Danish exchange student Tom Buk-Swienty encountered the name Jacob Riis (1849–1914) in a history course at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was shocked to learn that a fellow Dane of whom he had never heard was a significant figure in American history. Now an accomplished journalist, Buk-Swienty has written The Other Half to inform his countrymen of Riis's colorful life story and American legacy. Two years ago, his well-researched, fast-paced biography was a best seller in Denmark, and in 2008, it was published in the United States, translated from Danish into English by the author's wife.	1
What can this book provide an American audience already familiar with Riis, the author of the classic How the Other Half Lives (1890) and a pioneer photographer whose images of New York's immigrant poor are landmarks in the history of the medium? Already available are two classic works: Riis's autobiography, The Making of an American (1901), and Alexander Alland's Jacob A. Riis: Photographer and Citizen (1974), which first drew attention to Riis's photographs. The short answer is that Buk-Swienty's The Other Half offers a solid alternative.	. . .

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