Peddlers, Merchants, and Junk Dealers

“Sharply focused but broadly resonant, Peddlers, Merchants and Junk Dealers supersedes the common “pack-peddler to professional” narrative of rural Jewry, and offers the fine-grained insight of a sociologist into the complexities of this understudied sector of American Jewish life. It shows us sociology making history.“–Robert S. Schine, author of Jewish Thought Adrift: Max Wiener 1882-1950“Peggy Nelson’s Peddlers, Merchants, and Junk-Dealers is an insightful and painstakingly researched study of a Jewish American story we need to know better and a Vermont story that is hardly known at all. Nelson combines genealogy, sociology, and ethnography to create a lively portrait and a compelling narrative.”–Michael Hoberman, author of Imagining Early Jews

Margaret K. Nelson is A. Barton Hepburn Professor Emerita of Sociology at Middlebury College. She is the author of many books, including Like Family: Narratives of Fictive Kinship; Limited Choices: Mable Jones, a Black Children’s Nurse in a Northern White Household (with Emily K. Abel); and Sociology Meets Memoir: An Exploration of Narrative and Method.