ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: Who was Gussie Herbert and what did she do?
Scott D. Seligman is a national award-winning author of narrative non-fiction with a special interest in the history and biography of hyphenated Americans. He holds an undergraduate degree in American history from Princeton University and a master’s degree from Harvard University. He is also a genealogist, retired corporate executive and specialist in China, where he lived for eight years. Scott has published articles in Smithsonian magazine, the Washington Post, The Forward, the Asian Wall Street Journal, and China Heritage Quarterly, among others. He has also created several websites on historical and genealogical topics.
Seligman is the author of twelve books, including The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902: Immigrant Housewives and the Riots that Shook New York City, and The Chief Rabbi’s Funeral: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Antisemitic Riot. We spoke with him about both these books and you can listen to those programs by clicking on the above links.
His latest book, The Great Christmas Boycott of 1906: Antisemitism and the Battle Over Christianity in the Public Schools, is the third in this series about Jewish life, activism and antisemitism in New York at the beginning of the last century. While it is written in a very engaging and entertaining style, it also includes a chronology and list of Jewish newspapers and characters, which are easy to refer back to. There are also copious endnotes and an index and list of publications for further reading on the many issues covered in the book.
