In this essay, Roth provides insight into East Jewish culture and life in the new homelands. It is a loving, often ironic portrayal of East Jewish culture, but above all, it addresses the misery that drove so many into the world, along with a captivating description of the new homelands, the Jewish quarters in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, and New York. In his 1927 essay "Jews on the Move," Roth, who himself hails from East Galicia, poses the question of who the book is intended for. In the preface, he writes: "The author harbors the foolish hope that there are still readers who have respect for pain, human greatness, and for the dirt that accompanies suffering everywhere; Western Europeans who are not proud of their clean mattresses; who feel that they have much to receive from the East and who perhaps know that great people come from Galicia, Russia, Lithuania, and Romania.".