It was a good weekend for The Names of John Gergen. On Saturday, in Columbia, Missouri, it received the 2022 Book Award from the State Historical Society of Missouri. I was thrilled, all the more so because last year’s recipient was the renowned Broken Heart of America.
To make matters even better, I also met that day Elizabeth Eikmann, who received the 2022 Dissertation Award for work on turn-of-the-century women’s photography in St. Louis and its role in gender and racial formation, which I look forward to reading. Turns out that Elizabeth had just published a review of The Names of John Gergen in Cambridge University’s journal Urban History. I’ve read the review, and it is first-rate. I wish I could post it, but it’s under copyright, so I’ll just quote a couple of sentences:
“Grounding his focus in the story of young John Gergen and his extended family, all of whom lived in a rapidly changing St Louis neighbourhood, Moore crafts a brilliant analysis of turn-of-the-century migration. Specifically, he interrogates the ways in which social, cultural and political institutions compelled Gergen (and other migrants like him) to redefine their identity in complex and contradictory ways – often multiple times over.”
Immigrant Identities in St. Louis, 1903-1935 