Yorkville Twins: Hilarious Adventures Growing Up in New York City, 1944-1962

If you want to take a trip down memory lane, and/or live the immigrant experience, this book is for you. It's an endearing collection of stories involving immigrants, survival, growing up, coming of age, and learning what it is to be an American. More than a memoir, it's an experience, a love story of family, friends, neighbors, and the Yorkville of yore!
Twin brothers Joseph and John Gindele spent their first 18 years growing up on the rough streets of Yorkville on Manhattan's ethnic Upper East Side over 60 years ago. This is their story--what the city was like then, how it changed, and how two kids from immigrant parents became accomplished Minnesota schoolteachers with earned doctorate degrees. They and their family succeeded in living the American dream. It s an American tale full of adventures and laughs, sweet memories and sad moments. How did their Czech and German parents and siblings--a family of seven--ever survive living with these guys?
Yorkville Twins has numerous themes that will appeal to wide audiences: (1) Rediscovering childhood memories, (2) Immigrants and immigration (past and present) that enabled our nation to grow, (3) Czech and German families and their descendants, (4) Memories of growing up in New York City in the 1940s, 50s and 60s in the colorful ethnic neighborhood of Yorkville, (5) Historical, cultural and social perspective of the past, and (6) Twins/multiples and their special bonds, many having predictive abilities.
This 328-page memoir contains 100+ period photographs/illustrations, richly annotated resources, and a glossary. Two bonus chapters discuss (1) their undergraduate days in the Midwest, as well as (2) things about twins. People tell us they love the book, and laughed so much reading it. The stories, they say, brought back so many fond memories, memories they only thought they had forgotten.
Yorkville Twins reveals surprises of how different, yet really how similar, childhood experiences were for all of us. Growing up on the East coast, West coast or in the Mid-west, stories of our youth are really pretty much the same. Or are they?