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Rating: 
Summary: A Great Business Novel
Review: "The Rise of David Levinsky" is a great business novel. Cahan describes how Mr. L becomes a successful maker of men's coats, and how L's ex-partner's wife become a very successful real estate entrepreneur. Actual description of how business success has been achieved is rarely shown in novels: it's available here.
Rating:
Summary: Classic American Literature
Review: I first read this book in the mid-70s when it was assigned as part of an undergrad history course. I devoured it then, rediscovered it ten years later and found I enjoyed it even more on a second reading. Subsequent readings have not diminished my admiration for the novel."Levinsky" is a rare example of the novel that works both as history and as literature. Cahan's firsthand observations of late 19th century industrial America and of the immigrants' struggles to adapt to life in a new land are compelling in their own right. But this is no mere slice of life realism. Cahan created complex characters who face conflicts beyond the struggle to survive. Cahan's main character, Levinsky, spends the first part of the book struggling to master the Talmud in his village in Russia. Here Cahan introduces us to Levinsky's incisive mind, one that will serve him well when he goes to America and begins to serve a new master: business. In the opening section, Cahan also develops one of several beautifully drawn supporting characters: Levinsky's mother. By novel's end, we realize the irony of the novel's title. On one level, Levinsky's story is a classic tale of rags-to-riches, American-style success. On the other, his story is one of failure to achieve the rich, personal, intellectually stimulating connection with others that he has craved since childhood. This great novel deserves to be on the short list of indispensable American fiction. One seeking to understand the roots of our country would be hard pressed to do better than to read it.
Rating:
Summary: Social realism with a soul
Review: I read this novel the first time in college and am re-reading it now. The social realism dazzled me then, but it's the incisive characterization that strikes me more now. You get a sense of objective social conditions, but a deeper and deeper sense of the main characters' souls as you read further along. Some of the sketches of human emotion sound familiar as something that happened to me yesterday. I believe this helps Cahan make his point, of Levinsky's material accomplishment and spiritual impoverishment. He gradually becomes emptied out, so to speak. He has lost his traditional religion and rejected the socialist substitute for religion. At the beginning, he has little but knows who he is - at the end, he has much but seems a stranger to himself.
Rating:
Summary: Social realism with a soul
Review: I read this novel the first time in college and am re-reading it now. The social realism dazzled me then, but it's the incisive characterization that strikes me more now. You get a sense of objective social conditions, but a deeper and deeper sense of the main characters' souls as you read further along. Some of the sketches of human emotion sound familiar as something that happened to me yesterday. I believe this helps Cahan make his point, of Levinsky's material accomplishment and spiritual impoverishment. He gradually becomes emptied out, so to speak. He has lost his traditional religion and rejected the socialist substitute for religion. At the beginning, he has little but knows who he is - at the end, he has much but seems a stranger to himself.
Rating:
Summary: A major early work of American - Jewish Literature
Review: There is an irony in the title. Cahan has a hero rise in wealth and position in the society only to be empty inside. There is a price to his Americanization in the loss in some deep sense of his past source of meaning in life.
This is a pioneering tale of American- Jewish Literature. It gives a picture of a world no longer with us.
It is clearly and well - written, and if it is not in the category of great Literature, still it is a valuable social document. It is well worth reading especially for those interested in ' immigrant literature'.
Rating: 
Summary: A blend of fiction and social realism
Review: This book gives a solid sense of what it must have felt like to be a Jewish immigrant to New York around the turn of the century. I enjoyed the fact that the book was not only a very interesting adventure, but also a fascinating account of changing class consciousness and socialization to a new society. Kahan's account of what is gained and what is given up in this process allowed me to understand my own ancestors at a deeper level. He writes well in a journalistic style and is constantly providing details about his present that help me to understand the meaning of what was going on.
Rating:
Summary: A blend of fiction and social realism
Review: This book gives a solid sense of what it must have felt like to be a Jewish immigrant to New York around the turn of the century. I enjoyed the fact that the book was not only a very interesting adventure, but also a fascinating account of changing class consciousness and socialization to a new society. Kahan's account of what is gained and what is given up in this process allowed me to understand my own ancestors at a deeper level. He writes well in a journalistic style and is constantly providing details about his present that help me to understand the meaning of what was going on.
Rating:
Summary: Great historical novel
Review: This is a highly recommended book for anyone who is interested in the history of the Jewish Lower East Side in the late 19th century and early 20th century. It is written by an author with intimate knowledge of the time and place. Written in 1917, it is a very captivating and compelling story of an Eastern European Jewish immigrant's plight on The Lower East Side. I highly recommend it.
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