A History of the Syrian Community of Grand Rapids, 1890-1945: From the Beqaa to the Grand (review)

122 The Michigan Historical Review her goal of blending the political with the personal, depicting Shaw’s reality with a critical eye. Shannon M. Risk Niagara University James F. Goode. A History of the Syrian Community of Grand Rapids, 18901945 : From the Beqaa to the Grand. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2013. Pp. 161. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Cloth, $163.15. James F. Goode’s A History of the Syrian Community of Grand Rapids, 1890-1945: From the Beqaa to the Grand examines Syrian and Lebanese migration and settlement in Grand Rapids and is a valuable contribution to the literature on Arab Americans and immigrant history in Michigan and the US in general. Highlighting research from the Faris and Yamna Naff Collection at the Smithsonian Institution and the Immigration History Research Center, and collecting oral histories, census data, newspaper accounts, court cases, and city records, Goode focuses on an immigrant group that has received little attention from historians. Grand Rapids was one of the earliest and largest centers of Syrian immigration in the US in the first half of the twentieth century, but it has been overshadowed by studies on the more populous and famous Arabicspeaking communities in nearby Detroit. In this book, Goode supplements his extensive research in Grand Rapids with a trip to Aita al-Foukhar and Rashayya al-Wadi—two villages that are located in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon, near the Syrian and Israeli borders where most of the immigrants to Grand Rapids originated. Although the local “Syrian colony” began forming in the 1890s, by 1920 the community represented between 1,000 to 1,500 people, or 1 to 1.5% of the population of Grand Rapids at the time. Following a narrative similar to that laid out by Alixa Naff in Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience (Southern Illinois University Press, 1985), Goode finds that the immigrants from the Syrian province of the Ottoman Empire were mostly Christian. They arrived poor with little education, but quickly gained success in the United States through peddling and small business ownership. Goode concludes that the most important institution to the early immigrants was the family, closely followed by the church, which was the center of social life until the end of World War II. In chapter 3 he notes that the mostly Orthodox Christian community in Grand Rapids was split in two according to village and extended transnational loyalties to the Russian vs. Antiochian Book Reviews 123 Orthodox Churches that were supported by local priests and national US-based archbishops. Village-based rivalries became the basis for community divides that came to a head in a lawsuit over the ownership of the Orthodox Church in Grand Rapids which was settled in 1923 in favor of the Aita-Antiochian/Toledo Church. Apparently, the community is still divided according to these church affiliations that align with family origins and friendship circles. Among many other insights in chapter 5, Goode focuses on the small number of Muslims who lived in Grand Rapids and their connections with fellow Syrian Christians. The strength of this work is how it advances our understanding of the ways national and international dynamics play out locally in the lives and institutions of this Arabic-speaking immigrant community. It will assist scholars in the fields of local, Michigan, and US immigration history to better explore issues pertaining to constructions of family, diasporic communities, religion, and ethnicity. Randa A. Kayyali American University John A. Heitmann and Rebecca H. Morales. Stealing Cars: Technology & Society from the Model T to the Grand Torino. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Pp. 216. Appendix. Index. Notes. Sources. Cloth, $29.95. Scholars have long recognized the far-reaching impact of the automobile on the history of modern America. In Stealing Cars, John A. Heitmann and Rebecca H. Morales tackle this surprisingly neglected topic, exploring automobile theft since the early twentieth century. Although the book focuses particular attention on the battle between car thieves and anti-theft technology, the authors also discuss fictional depictions of automobile theft, including films and video games. Heitmann and Morales provide a careful description of the development of anti-theft devices (complete with schematic diagrams) and emphasize the connection between trends...