Jacob A. Riis

Jacob Riis was born in Ribe, Denmark, and emigrated to the United States in 1870. After a hard first few years he became a police reporter in New York. He used flash photography to document crowded tenements and wrote How the Other Half Lives in 1890, which pushed city leaders toward housing reform. Theodore Roosevelt called him the best American he knew. He also wrote warm holiday stories, such as The Burgomaster's Christmas.