Immigration History

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An NPR Best Book of the Year Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year Longlisted for the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence “American Whitelash is indispensable. Really. It is.” – Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist Pulitzer Prize–winning...

Angel Island, the largest island in San Francisco Bay at about 740 acres, was originally named when Don Juan Manuel Ayala sailed into San Francisco Bay. Supposedly, the island was named “Angel” because the land mass appeared to him as an angel guarding the bay, and when Ayala made a map of the Bay, on it he marked Angel Island as, “Isla de Los Angeles”. This would remain the island’s name ever since, even as the use of the island would certainly change over time.

A Century of Immigration reviews the century of 1820 through 1920, in which there were two waves of immigration to the United States.

This book discusses the varied motivations and nationalities of these new Americans, as well as the effects of mass immigration on the country as a whole, and the rise of antiforeign sentiments among more recent immigrants.

How do we define patriotism in a diverse society? What divides us and what brings us together? Why do we feel uncomfortable celebrating our country’s history? How to be a Patriot offers a new way of understanding our collective identity in a country wracked by division and brimming with...

Two refugees find that their lives are inextricably linked—over time and distance—by the perils of history and a single haunting piece of music in this “breathtaking and simultaneously heartbreaking” (The Montecito Journal) story. Born in Beirut in 1922, Marguerite Toutounghi lives a...

Newspaper headlines and prime-time TV interviews lauded Enrique Peña Nieto after he won Mexico’s 2012 presidential election. Time Magazine front covered him as “The Savior of Mexico.” By the second year of his administration it had become obvious that the savior was a failure. Attempted cover ups failed to conceal an economy based on self-enrichment and the impoverishment of overly 40 percent of the population and the disappearance of forty-three young student protesters. Peña Nieto’s wobbly status became even more fragile when he encountered US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

"[Narrator Frankie] Corzo's expressive style enhances [author Elena] Sheppard's moving story of loss and identity. " — AudioFile In the tradition of The Yellow House and Half Broke Horses, a memoir of the Cuban diaspora that follows one family’s exile from the island, through a lyrical...

Timely—as the 2012 presidential election nears—and controversial, here is the first book by a major African-American public intellectual on racial politics and the Obama presidency. Renowned for his cool reason vis-à-vis the pitfalls and clichés of racial discourse, Randall...

A must-read for modern sanghas--Asian American Buddhists in their own words, on their own terms. Despite the fact that two thirds of U.S. Buddhists identify as Asian American, mainstream perceptions about what it means to be Buddhist in America often whitewash and invisibilize the diverse...

Forever Prisoners offers the first broad history of immigrant detention in the United States. Elliott Young focuses on five stories, including Chinese detained off the coast of Washington in the late 1880s, an "insane" Russian-Brazilian Jew caught on a ship shuttling between New York and South America during World War I, Japanese Peruvians kidnapped and locked up in a Texas jail during World War II, a prison uprising by Mariel Cuban refugees in 1987, and a Salvadoran mother who grew up in the United States and has spent years incarcerated while fighting deportation.

A comprehensive history of school choice in the US, from its birth in the 1950s as the most effective weapon to oppose integration to its lasting impact in reshaping the public education system today. Most Americans today see school choice as their inalienable right. In The Choice We Face...

"Drakulić’s composite portrait provides a clear-eyed look at European values, and what they really amount to." —The New Yorker An evocative and timely collection of essays that paints a portrait of Eastern Europe thirty years after the end of communism. An immigrant with a parrot in...

This provocative account of our immigration system's long, racist history reveals how it has become the brutal machine that upends the lives of millions of immigrants today. Each year in the United States, hundreds of thousands of people are arrested, imprisoned, and deported, trapped in what...

Joe Meno brings a novelist's eye to the true story of two young men from Ghana and their journey from the unjust political system of their homeland through the chaos of the United States' failing immigration system Long before their chance meeting at a Minneapolis bus station, Ghanaian asylum...

A direct counterpoint to fear mongering headlines about shariah law—a Muslim American legal expert tells the real story, eliminating stereotypes and assumptions with compassion, irony, and humor Through scare tactics and deliberate misinformation campaigns, anti-Muslim propagandists insist...

A bold and impassioned meditation on injustice in our country that punctures the illusion of a postracial America and reveals it as a place where authoritarianism looms large. Whether the issues are protest, labor, patriotism, or class division, it is clear that professional sports are no longer...

Do you have a relative or friend who would gladly wait on you, hand and foot, for a full month after you had a baby? How about someone to deliver a delicious, piping hot home-cooked meal, just like your mother’s, right to your front door after work? Do you know people you’d trust enough to...

How community-centered, peer-to-peer, youth knowledge exchanges are evolving into a strong economic and political foundation on which to build radical public education. Following in the rich traditions in African American cooperative economic and educational thought, teacher-organizer Jay Gillen...

One of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of the Year "A remarkable book...indispensable."--The Boston Globe "A sweeping, deeply reported tale of international migration...DeParle's understanding of migration is refreshingly clear-eyed and nuanced."--The New York Times "This is epic reporting...

An eye-opening exploration of race in America In this deeply inspiring audiobook, Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi recount their experiences talking to people from all walks of life about race and identity on a cross-country tour of America. Spurred by the realization that they had nearly completed...