The Polish Peasant in Europe and America

This first abridgment of 'The Polish Peasant in Europe and America' makes available to scholars and students the central thought of a classic of American sociology. A seminal work in urban sociology and a major source for American working-class and immigrant history, 'The Polish Peasant' illuminates the lives of the nearly two million Poles who immigrated to America between 1880 and 1910.

Originally published in five volumes between 1918 and 1920, and long out of print, the work introduced a new qualitative methodology to American social science and formulated the highly influential concept of social disorganization - the decline of family ties and community bonds in urban settings. In his skillful abridgement, Zaretsky maintains the authors' focus on this concept and provides a lengthy introduction that traces the work's extremely wide-ranging influences in several disciplines and situates it within the context of contemporary scholarship.