They Who Knock at Our Gates: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

They Who Knock at Our Gates, credited to Mary Antin, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of They Who Knock at Our Gates by Mary Antin. Read in English by Maria Kasper In 1914, over one million immigrants arrived in the United States, following in the footsteps of approximately ten million others who had arrived in the preceding decade. Faced with so many newcomers, many of them from backgrounds new to the American mix, voices in government and in the press had begun arguing in favor of more severely restrictionist immigration policies. In They Who Knock at Our Gates, Mary Antin broke down the discussion into three basic questions. First, the ethical question -- Where do we discover a right to restrict new arrivals, in light of all men's equal natural rights as declared by our founding documents? Second, the factual questions -- Who are these new immigrants, what sorts of gifts and qualities do they possess, what are their strengths and weaknesses, and what biases do we bring to our assessment of them? And third, the slippery question of individual interpretation -- How shall we decide without prejudice whether immigration is good for us, as a nation and as individual citizens? Written a century ago, Mary Antin's analysis of the "immigration question" still speaks to current readers. (Summary by Maria Kasper)

Recording facts

• Recording title: They Who Knock at Our Gates
• Author credits: Mary Antin
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 10
• Listed recording duration: 2:24:14

Catalogue topics

• immigration

Track guide

1. 01 - Introduction — 3:03
2. 02 - The Law of the Fathers, part 1 — 15:17
3. 03 - The Law of the Fathers, part 2 — 14:51
4. 04 - Judges in the Gate, part 1 — 15:56
5. 05 - Judges in the Gate, part 2 — 16:01
6. 06 - Judges in the Gate, part 3 — 19:06
7. 07 - Judges in the Gate, part 4 — 15:09
8. 08 - The Fiery Furnace, part 1 — 16:10
9. 09 - The Fiery Furnace, part 2 — 13:07
10. 10 - The Fiery Furnace, part 3 — 15:34

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.