"A well-organized, thoughtful work which amply demonstrates the author’s command of the literature on labor, social, and class history. . . . Pacyga illustrates better than any previous author the relationship of Polish behavior in America to the traditional values and practices of Polish peasant society in Europe."

James S. Pula | Journal of American Ethnic History

“Its outstanding quality is the description of the life of its subjects. . . . [Pacyga] offers a graphic and vivid picture of what it was like for an unskilled, blue-collar foreign worker to labor in the arduous and dangerous environments of the slaughterhouse and the steel mill at the turn of the century”

Victor Greene | The Journal of American History

“A classic social history of one immigrant community. Yet it also links the experiences of Poles on the South Side of Chicago to broader elements of social, class, and labor history. [Pacyga’s] work offers important insights into American history during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era.”

The History Teacher | August 2005

“Scholars who have followed the recent scholarship of Lizabeth Cohen’s Making a New Deal (1990) and of Robert A. Slayton’s Back of the Yards (1986) will wish to study Pacyga’s valuable monograph in more detail.”

Joseph J. Parot | American Historical Review