Greenhorn, by Alex Krieger

Episodes in an Immigrant’s Life

In this luminous memoir a life shaped by motion, memory, cultures and careers, unfolds in the art of making a home in the unfamiliar. At the age of nine, Alex Krieger arrived in America with his three parents—survivors of the Holocaust. In Chicago, he finds his fourth first grade classroom to learn a fourth language in four years. From displaced childhood the journeying continues as teacher, architect, planner of cities. With a poet’s sensitivity and a craftsman’s precision, Krieger reflects on that greenhorn’s instinct to embrace the values of an adopted nation while remaining eyewitness to its paradoxes.

“In prose at once sensitive and exacting, Alex Krieger captures the immigrant’s enduring double vision: a heartfelt embrace of an adopted country coupled with eyewitness clarity to its contradictions. The result is a luminous meditation on belonging that honors both allegiance and origin.”
—Pam Y. Eddinger Ph.D. President, Bunker Hill Community College, Boston

“Alex Krieger’s engrossing memoir offers a timely reminder of the value that immigrants have brought to this country. It’s a coming-of-age story that parallels America’s own postwar coming of age, rife with social complexities but also extraordinary opportunities that take a boy born in Vilnius, Lithuania to Poland, Israel, Chicago, Cornell, and ultimately Harvard. I recommend Greenhorn to anyone seeking inspiration from stories of how family, higher education, architecture, and urbanism have all shaped – and will all continue to shape – this country’s civic and cultural fabric.”
—Sarah M. Whiting: Dean, and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design

“A humbling journey through the challenges of starting life anew. An intimate recounting of one man’s immigration journey. A globe-spanning journey from immigrant to eminent.”
–Todd Medema, author of How to Surf a Hurricane