author

Broughton Brandenburg

1876–1963

Best known for an unusual piece of early immersive reporting, he wrote about immigration by traveling in disguise and turning the experience into a vivid firsthand narrative. His work has an immediate, documentary feel that still makes it stand out.

1 Audiobook

Imported Americans The Story of the Experiences of a Disguised American and His Wife Studying the Immigration Question

Imported Americans The Story of the Experiences of a Disguised American and His Wife Studying the Immigration Question

by Broughton Brandenburg

About the author

Broughton Brandenburg was an American writer and journalist born in 1876 and died in 1963. Public-domain library records and author listings consistently identify him with the book Imported Americans, a study of immigration first published in the early 1900s.

That book is the main reason he is remembered today. In it, Brandenburg and his wife reportedly posed as immigrants so they could observe the process and daily realities of immigrant life at close range, giving the book the energy of both reportage and social investigation.

Available source material is fairly limited, so many biographical details are not easy to confirm from reliable pages. What can be said with confidence is that he belonged to the wave of early 20th-century magazine and nonfiction writers who tried to explain major social questions to a broad readership through direct observation.