Most Fortunate Unfortunates

“Attentive to race and gender, and contextualized within general and Jewish history as well as the history of childcare, Most Fortunate Unfortunates sets a new standard as a well-researched, well-written, warts-and-all history of the Jewish Orphans’ Home of New Orleans.” ~Jonathan D. Sarna, Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University and author of American Judaism: A History

“What’s remarkable about Marlene Trestman’s Most Fortunate Unfortunates is its ability to shift scope, from the intricate details of a New Orleans institutional history—complete with names, faces, personalities, and incidents hitherto forgotten—to regional, national, and even international contexts.” ~Richard Campanella, author of Cityscapes of New Orleans

“With narrative empathy and scholarly rigor, Trestman gives readers insight not only into one specific orphanage, but also into the larger challenges, triumphs, and dilemmas of an American Jewish community determined to care for its children.” ~Kim van Alkemade, New York Times–bestselling author of Orphan #8: A Novel

“Most Fortunate Unfortunates belongs on the reading list of everyone interested in childcare and education, as well as southern and American Jewish and general history.” ~Mark K. Bauman, founding editor of Southern Jewish History and author of A New Vision of Southern Jewish History: Studies in Institution Building, Leadership, Interaction, and Mobility

“A comprehensive and engaging study of a pioneering Jewish orphanage in the United States.” ~Reena Sigman Friedman, author of These Are Our Children: Jewish Orphanages in the United States, 1880–1925

“More than 140 interviews and oral histories augment this enlightening institutional history that follows the emergence of professional social workers and explores still-evolving childcare standards.” ~Hollace Ava Weiner, coeditor of Lone Stars of David: The Jews of Texas and author of Jewish Stars in Texas: Rabbis and Their Work

“Trestman’s Most Fortunate Unfortunates provides a wide-scoped, well-written, carefully documented, and extensively researched window into the story of Jewish institutional childcare in America over nearly a hundred years.” ~Peter M. Wolf, author of The Sugar King: Leon Godchaux: A New Orleans Legend, His Creole Slave, and His Jewish Roots

“Marlene Trestman has written an outstanding study of the Home for Jewish Widows and Orphans, located in New Orleans. Aptly entitled The Most Fortunate Unfortunates, this book successfully navigates the perils of tedious institutional history and, on the other hand, unfettered personal accounts. What emerges is a readable history that adds to our understanding of Jewish practices and philanthropy, the city of New Orleans, and changing views on institutional child care. Additionally, given her exhaustive research into the "Home," Trestman gives readers a sense of what it was like to be one of those ‘fortunate unfortunates.’” ~Jean Baker, co-editor of The Civil War in Maryland Reconsidered