US2H Summer Reading Assignment 2016: How the Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis, 1890

The summer reading assignment for Westwood HS US2 History (Honors) will be “How the Other Half Lives” by Jacob Riis, a Danish photographer in 1890. The author emigrated from Denmark in 1870 and began a life in America similar to many other immigrants. He moved from job to job until he found his niche in photography. Riis was befriended by the NY Police Commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, in 1890 who accompanied him on many of his photographic forays into the tenements.

Riis’s 1890 treatise of social criticism How the Other Half Lives was written in the belief “that every man’s experience ought to be worth something to the community from which he drew it, no matter what that experience may be, so long as it was gleaned along the line of some decent, honest work.” Full of unapologetically harsh accounts of life in the worst slums of New York, fascinating and terrible statistics on tenement living, and reproductions of his revelatory photographs, How the Other Half Lives (www.smithsonian.org).

“How the Other Half Lives” is still available in print from many sources, and is generally stocked in larger bookstores. It may be obtained online using the resources in the table below. You are not required to purchase the book, but you are required to read it completely. An assignment regarding the reading will be posted in the Google Classroom by July 15, 2016.

These instructions and a PDF copy of the book are available in the Google Classroom “US History 2 Honors 2016-17”. Join the classroom using Code “rd1mw14”. A copy of this letter will also be available as an announcement. For now read the book, and a written assignment will be posted in the classroom by July 15, 2016. PLEASE BE SURE AND LOG INTO THE CLASSROOM BY JUNE 30, 2016 AND REQUEST NOTIFICATIONS.

Website URL Format Yale University http://elearn.uni- PDF sofia.bg/pluginfile.php/170076/mod_resource/content/1/JacobRiis_hypertext.pd f Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45502 Various Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Other-Half-Lives-Special-Illustrated/dp/1438296630 Amazon Kindle https://www.amazon.com/Other-Half-Lives-Jacob-Riis-ebook/dp/B001MV6XTI Kindle BN http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/how-the-other-half-lives-jacob-a- Paper back riis/1116784405 Google Books Search for title Public Libraries Search in BCCLS under "How the Other Half Lives" .Author: Jacob Riis