This comprehensive work details the specifics on over 100 ethnic groups and presents comparative or thematic treatments of another 30 topics related to immigration and identity maintenance.

This classic work by the distinguished economist traces the history of nine American ethnic groups -- the Irish, Germans, Jews, Italians, Chinese, African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans.

Which ethnic groups introduced the log cabin? The front Porch? The sauna? Read about 22 different ethnic groups including Native Americans, African Americans, and Hawaiians who made significant contributions that still influence the face of America.

Enslaved peoples were brought to the Americas from many places in Africa, but a large majority came from relatively few ethnic groups. Drawing on a wide range of materials in four languages as well as on her lifetime study of slave groups in the New World, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall explores the persistence of African ethnic identities among the enslaved over four hundred years of the Atlantic slave trade. Hall traces the linguistic, economic, and cultural ties shared by large numbers of enslaved Africans, showing that despite the fragmentation of the diaspora many ethnic groups retained enough cohesion to communicate and to transmit elements of their shared culture. Hall concludes that recognition of the survival and persistence of African ethnic identities can fundamentally reshape how people think about the emergence of identities among enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Americas, about the ways shared identity gave rise to resistance movements, and about the elements of common African ethnic traditions that influenced regional creole cultures throughout the Americas.

This brief history acts as an introduction to the inter-related themes of race, ethnicity and immigration in American history. It spans the years 1600 to 2000, exploring the historical roots of contemporary identity politics.

The contributors to this volume probe systematically and in depth the adaptation patterns and trajectories of concrete ethnic groups. They provide a close look at this rising second generation by focusing on youth of diverse national origins—Mexican, Cuban, Nicaraguan, Filipino, Vietnamese, Haitian, Jamaican and other West Indian—coming of age in immigrant families on both coasts of the United States. Their analyses draw on the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study, the largest research project of its kind to date. Ethnicities demonstrates that, while some of the ethnic groups being created by the new immigration are in a clear upward path, moving into society's mainstream in record time, others are headed toward a path of blocked aspirations and downward mobility. The book concludes with an essay summarizing the main findings, discussing their implications, and identifying specific lessons for theory and policy.

Ethnic diversity has marked the United States from its inception and is now experiencing watershed changes in its social, cultural, and ethnic/racial geographies. Considering the impact of these transformations, this unique text examines a range of ethnic groups in both historical and contemporary context. The contributors present a rich set of case studies of key ethnic and racial communities—including those of long-standing significance such as Native Americans, African Americans, and Mexican Americans, along with the Latin American and Asian groups that make up the vast majority of newer immigrants. Each case offers a brief historical overview of the group's immigration experience and settlement patterns and discusses how it has transformed—and been transformed by—the places in which they have settled. Exploring changing communities, places, and landscapes, this book offers a nuanced understanding of the evolution of America's ethnic geographies.