Critical Praise

"The Long Way Home is a riveting remembrance of the Great War by a master writer. David Laskin, by homing in on the lives of a dozen immigrants to Ellis Island, is able to tell a grand American saga about the true cost of democracy. All around a deeply compelling narrative."

—Douglas Brinkley, author of The Wilderness Warrior

"Compelling... Laskin has built his book on dozens of interviews, family and regimental histories, military records and historical archives. He clearly has a firm grasp on a lot of detail, both military and personal."

—The Seattle Times

"David Laskin’s latest, The Long Way Home, reads with the heart-quickening pace of a novel as he focuses his gaze on a band of real-life characters who emigrated to the United States in the years just before World War I... Laskin’s great genius for creating affection for long-dead heroes lies in his tireless research."

—The Minneapolis Star Tribune

"A compelling book... Imaginative... Lasking mines family legends and official documents to tell the stories of these ordinary foot soldiers from Italy and Ireland, Poland and Russia, Slovakia and Norway... Today’s immigrants don’t become Yanks in the trenches of France. That transformation occurs in the farmlands of Florida, the factories of Pennsylvania, the laboratories of California and, sometimes, on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. This story, like this country, never ends."

—The Washington Post