Stein Mart

In 1905, Sam Stein, a young Jewish immigrant from Russia, arrived in New York with $43 in his pocket and dreams of building a better life. David J. Ginzl documents the history of a company that is also the story of a remarkable family and the business three generations built together, from an immigrant peddler working the Mississippi Delta to a national retail chain with corporate offices in Jacksonville, Florida. Reading the book, one realizes that the mythical Horatio Alger success story popularized in the nineteenth century was reenacted in real life by young immigrants and American dreamers well into the twentieth century.