From 1901, a rare and impressive first edition, The Making of an American, by Denmark-born Jacob A. Riis, author of the influential work How the Other Half Lives, about slum life in New York. Published by The Macmillan Company, sized 9x6 inches, 443 pages. Bound in handsome blue ribbed cloth, gilt titles. With so many illustrations that it takes 3 pages of small type just to list them. Some of the pictures were featured in How the Other Half Lives. Who was Jacob A. Riis?

Jacob August Riis (May 3, 1849 – May 26, 1914) was a Danish-American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist, and social documentary photographer. He contributed significantly to the cause of urban reform in the United States of America at the turn of the twentieth century. He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those impoverished New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific writings and photography. He endorsed the implementation of "model tenements" in New York with the help of humanitarian Lawrence Veiller. Additionally, as one of the most famous proponents of the newly practicable casual photography, he is considered one of the fathers of photography due to his very early adoption of photographic flash.

While living in New York, Riis experienced poverty and became a police reporter writing about the quality of life in the slums. He attempted to alleviate the poor living conditions of poor people by exposing these conditions to the middle and upper classes.