Macedonians of America Series (Books)

[JPMKD]

This great! I think I will have to check some of the books out and maybe invite him for a beer on me! If I share some Mastika maybe I can get an autograph too!


EDIT: I just ordered Vol 1 and Vol3.

[vicsinad]

Thanks! Hope they provide you with some interesting insight into our community.

Perhaps in the future I will start a series on North Macedonians...

[vicsinad]

Hello all,

The fourth book in this Macedonians of America series is out. It's called Big Sky Macedonians: A Study of Montana's Macedonian-Americans. Unlike the three previous books in this series, which followed a particular individual in a community, this book is in two parts: the first is an analysis and examination of the data and trends for 645 Macedonians that worked and lived in Montana. I examine their recorded birthplaces, mother tongue, birth years, immigration age, where they resided, and etc. to draw some specific conclusions about Macedonian immigration to Montana and about Macedonian immigration in general.

The second part of the book is a look at about 65 profiles and biographical sketches of a sampling of those Macedonians who actually lived out their lives in Montana. This helps give faces to all of the data and to better understand what life was like for Macedonians who lived in an area where there was no true "Macedonian colony" like in Detroit, Fort Wayne, Cincinnati, and etc.

At the end there is a table with a list of all 645 Macedonians examined, including their birth years and where they resided in Montana. There's also 27 pages of footnotes.

The book is 118 pages. Please note that the e-book version skews the tables, graphs and charts because of formatting issues, but those charts appear normal in the paperback version. The charts are still readable in the e-book version, they just look a little funky.


Here is a link to the book:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...ky+macedonians

I will have a more "exciting" book coming out on Macedonian-Americans in about a month -- one that (partly) takes a deeper look into the feuds between Macedonians, Bulgarians and Greeks in the early years of Macedonian immigration.

[vicsinad]

My fifth installment in this series:

The First Macedonian Colony: The Untold History of the Macedonian Settlement in Granite City

Summary from the back cover:

Riots. Vendettas. Blackmail. Murder. For thousands of Macedonians who settled in Granite City and its environs during the first decades of the 20th century, life in the New World was in many ways the same as in the Old World. These Macedonians may have escaped their impoverished and enslaved homeland for prospects of prosperity and freedom in America, but Macedonia followed them across the ocean to the saloons, factories, and boarding houses of Granite City.

The First Macedonian Colony explores the Macedonian immigrant experience in Granite City during the early 20th century. It examines the monopoly that the wealthy Macedonian bankers and businessmen held over the local Macedonians; details the political and ethnic rivalries of the Macedonians, Greeks and Bulgarians; and chronicles ordinary Macedonians as they integrated into American society all while preserving their Macedonian identity and culture. This little-known story of America’s first Macedonian settlement carries readers on a rousing voyage that will challenge all preconceived notions about the history of Macedonian immigration to America.

The book is 122 pages.

Link to paperback:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/17...api_taft_p2_i0

Link to Kindle version:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...pi_taft_p1_i10

Enjoy and thanks to all those who have bought some of these books.

[vicsinad]

Originally Posted by vicsinad

My fifth installment in this series:

The First Macedonian Colony: The Untold History of the Macedonian Settlement in Granite City

Summary from the back cover:



The book is 122 pages.

Link to paperback:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/17...api_taft_p2_i0

Link to Kindle version:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...pi_taft_p1_i10

Enjoy and thanks to all those who have bought some of these books.

A nice little surprise, this book is now available at the Dallas Public Library in their genealogy collection...if any of you ever find yourselves in Texas.

https://catalog.dallaslibrary.org/po...s=1&cn=2851498

[Dejan]

Great work Vic

[Liberator of Makedonija]

Might have to get this one as well Vic, sounds interesting. Great stuff as usual though.

[Liberator of Makedonija]

Vic, can you tell us anything about Stoyan Christowe? There's an original copy of 'Heroes and Assassins' floating around for $100 and sparked my interest. His English wikipedia article claims he originally considered the terms Macedonian and Bulgarian interchangable?

[vicsinad]

Originally Posted by Liberator of Makedonija

Vic, can you tell us anything about Stoyan Christowe? There's an original copy of 'Heroes and Assassins' floating around for $100 and sparked my interest. His English wikipedia article claims he originally considered the terms Macedonian and Bulgarian interchangable?

I have a signed copy of that book -- probably paid around $140 if I remember correctly. I also have most of his other books. I lived in Vermont for several years and he was a representative/senator in Vermont in the 60s/70s, so it wasn't terribly difficult to get his books.

Christowe did refer to himself as a Bulgarian in certain contexts, but he didn't use the terms Bulgarian and Macedonian interchangeably. It was generally when he was trying to distinguish between groups of people who identified with different churches or languages.

His thinking changed a lot in the late 1930s and 1940s. He wrote several articles, during World War II and after, about how the Macedonians finally had their own language, nation, and etc. after decades of struggle. He was disenchanted with the MPO, Mihailov's VMRO, and Bulgaromani, and especially with the fascists and the events leading up to and during the Second World War.

He reminds me a lot of Reverend David Nakoff, in the sense that they only referred to themselves as Bulgarians because that's how others referred to them and they never took pride in being Bulgarian. They didn't necessarily or consistently refer to a Bulgarian culture or ethnicity; even when they would call themselves Bulgarians in certain contexts, they would still speak of the Macedonian nation and the Macedonian people. Clearly, they were experiencing an awakening and shaking off the past propaganda and myth that Macedonians were Bulgarian. I've read much of Christowe's books and articles (he was a journalist) from the 1920s through the 1970s. It's interesting to see the transition. Part of it is the concept of ethnicity really didn't make sense to Balkan peoples during the late 1800s and early 1900s when who you were was really defined by what Church you belonged to or what language you spoke. Obviously, Macedonians failed to codify their own language and get a church until the 1940s due to the competing propagandas, so thus you have the Bulgarian descriptive hanging over them. Once the idea of ethnicity took root, that really helped the Macedonian cause because that was something beyond church and language affiliation.

[Liberator of Makedonija]

Very interesting, so even in the early days Christowe was still first and foremost a Macedonian who did not associate himself with the Bulgarian state?