Book Review: The Story of My Life

The Story of My Life. By Frank Vlchek, translated and edited by Winston Chrislock. Kent:  The Kent State University Press, 2004, xvi, 392 pp., $34.00, ISBN 0-87338-817-8.

The Story of My Life by Frank Vlchek is an extraordinarily detailed account of the fortunes of a Czech immigrant who arrived in Cleveland in 1888 and went on to become one of the city’s leading manufacturers and a prominent member of Cleveland’s Czech community.  The book was first published in Czechoslovakia in 1928 and in 1929, Fern Long, an employee of the Cleveland Public Library, translated it into English but it has remained in manuscript form until the appearance of this edition edited by Winston Chrislock.  All of those interested in Cleveland’s history will be grateful for its appearance since it contains a wealth of detail about the city’s industrial and ethnic life written from the perspective of an individual who participated in Cleveland’s emergence as a major industrial city. Continue reading Book Review: The Story of My Life