Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What It Means to Be American

This book presents many essays on the issue of assimilation and our American "melting pot." One is left with an optimistic outlook on our current immigration situation however you feel that the writers are somewhat detached from the reality which our major urban centers near the southern border. Overall a great overview and should be used as a refernence point in today's debate. talkwiseblog

This is one of the best books of its type I have read. It does what so few non-fiction books do: places a current social dilemma in its historical context. Reading it, one realizes that making one nation out of people from all over the world is an unprecedented task at which America has been remarkably successful. These essays encourage the hope that the marvel of assimilation is not merely something that America used to do. Rather, it is a process that continues and seems likely to go on for the foreseeable future.

This collection of essays is about assimilation in two senses. First, the subject concerns the process, so commonplace in this country that we forget how unique it is in the entire world, where people from other countries become citizens of America. This process involves not only the formal steps of naturalization, but the changes immigrants make to become part of American society, and the way their assimilation, in turns, changes American society. This subject is that rare topic that is both important and interesting. Open this book to any page and you'll learn something you didn't know about America's social history, and something you'll welcome adding to your knowledge of this country. The book is about assimilation in a second sense: 21 essayists from different professions and viewpoints put forward a sense of how assimilation works in the 21st century that hangs together, and gives hope that America will cohere and endure.

The subtitle really is significant: Americans need to concentrate on what it means to be American. Americans have a responsibility to communicate those high ideals to those of us who would wish to become Americans. This book does that. Across the board, each essay provides a powerful incentive to examine this question. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it highly.