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114 The Michigan Historical Review Barbara Lorenzkowski. The Sounds of Ethnicity: Listening to German North America, 1850-1914. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2010. Pp. 295. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Paper, $34.95. The Sounds of Ethnicity brings a new approach to the study of ethnic history by focusing on the soundscapes of German North American communities. Barbara Lorenzkowski is from this background and therefore aware of the importance of song and speech to the ethnic identity of her family. She applies this insight to her broader study of German North American ethnic history with excellent results. The German North America of her title is a bit exaggerated, however. Her real focus is the German communities of Berlin (Kitchener) in Waterloo County, Ontario, and Buffalo, New York. She expands her focus somewhat to include German Americans in Michigan and on the periphery of Lake Erie. There are some excursions farther afield, but her primary research and main focus lie between western New York and eastern Michigan. Although it might be argued that this choice weakens the book because German American population centers in other areas might not fit the picture she develops, it is also true that this narrowed focus made the research project manageable and allowed Lorenzkowski to explore experiences in more depth than that would have been possible in a broader study. Historical soundscapes are not directly accessible before sound recording, but Lorenzkowski makes effective use of the translation of sound into print provided by would-be ethnic gatekeepers’ extensive critiques of the language and music of their communities. The first part of the book is made up of these comments as elaborated in discussions and arguments, first in the popular press and then around the teaching of German in the schools. The rest of the book details how the author listened to reports and records of the developing largescale German singers’ festivals in the Great Lakes region. In general Lorenzkowski handles these issues and developments with great care and brings out their significance in the shaping of ethnic identities. She acknowledges the differences between developing German American and German Canadian ethnic identities—even as she notes how these categories overlapped as German Canadians moved to the United States but continued to maintain close ties to their families and communities in Canada. It is impossible to do justice to the author’s careful and thorough analysis in a short review. The only major fault I found in the book was in her discussion of language. She devotes extensive attention to Book Reviews 115 the complaints of educated German North Americans about the lack of “proper” German in their communities. Lorenzkowski attributes this to the rapid adoption of English words and grammar in the German of less-educated immigrant families, but she misses the significance of the issue of “proper” German versus German dialects. She gives an example of the infiltration of English grammar into German, which in fact is normal speech in Austria and parts of southern Germany and was probably a normal part of the speech of these immigrants before they arrived in North America (p. 36). This is not a minor issue because it impacts her extensive discussion of the reluctance of German immigrant parents to enroll their children in German language classes in the schools. They cannot have been enthusiastic about subjecting their children to ridicule directed at their home dialects by teachers who were educated to despise dialects and trained to uproot them. Despite this lapse, Sounds of Ethnicity is a major contribution to ethnic history, and not just to that of German immigrants or the Great Lakes region. Stan Nadel University of Portland Center Salzburg, Austria Patricia Majher. Ladies of the Lights: Michigan Women in the U.S. Lighthouse Service. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010. Pp. 120. Bibliography. Index. Notes. Photographs. Paper, $22.95. If you are at all familiar with the Great Lakes, you already have some appreciation for the steely resolve necessary to enter a maritime vocation in this part of the world. Certainly, such determination was required in the early nineteenth century and it remains so today. Often, however, our mental picture of early working-class maritime professionals...

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