Ethnic Americans - A History of Immigration, 4th ed

    "A thoughtful, reasonably comprehensive, up-to-date analysis of American immigrant and ethnic experiences. Without sacrificing the scholarly integrity of their materials, they have written a book that not only addresses important historical as well as contemporary issues and trends but also does so in a most readable manner."
    —Elliot Barkan, California State University

    "This fine study of American immigration by two of the top scholars in the field is, far and away, the best brief account of the topic we have."
    —Roger Daniels, University of Cincinnati

    " Ethnic Americans is brief, concise, and well written. Without using jargon or overloading the reader with statistics, the book manages to tell the story of immigration to the United States down to the present in just 264 pages of text—an impressive achievement."
    —Alan Schaffer, Clemson University

First published in 1977, Ethnic Americans has established itself as the classic study of immigration to the United States in the twentieth century. This updated edition reflects developments of the 1980s and '90s—a period that has seen the greatest wave of immigration in American history. The burgeoning trend of increasing immigration, mostly from Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean, is expected to continue. But how welcome will all these people be, and what is the history of the melting (sometimes boiling) pot they are pouring into?

In investigating these questions, Ethnic Americans provides a concise yet comprehensive overview of immigration and assimilation of European, Asian, and Latin American peoples from 1607 to the present. The fourth edition has been revised and expanded to incorporate new research on women immigrants, the new refugees, and the continuing asylum crisis of the 1990s. Dinnerstein and Reimers also examine the continuity of nativism and restrictionist sentiment in the United States, as shown in the movements to make English the official language of the nation and in attempts to end bilingual education and ballots.

Contents

1.The Colonial Heritage
2.A Wave of Immigrants, 1789-1890s
3.A New Wave of Immigrants, 1890s-1920s
4.Ethnic Conflict and Immigration Restriction
5.Immigration After World War II, 1945-1998
6.Newcomers from South of the Border
7.Pilgrims' Progress: Ethnic Mobility in Modern America
8.Whither Ethnic America? Assimilation into American Life

About the Authors

Leonard Dinnerstein is professor of history and director of the Program in Jewish Studies, University of Arizona. He is the author of The Leo Frank Case, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, and Uneasy at Home, all published by Columbia.

David M. Reimers is professor of history at New York University and the author of Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America and (with Fred Binder) All the Nations Under Heaven: An Ethnic History of New York, both published by Columbia.