CONTENTS

AN EMERGING CONSENSUS

Tamar Jacoby
Defining Assimilation for the 21st Century
The New Immigrants: A Progress Report

THEN AND NOW

Herbert J. Gans
The American Kaleidoscope, Then and Now
Stephan Thernstrom
Rediscovering the Melting Pot–Still Going Strong
Nathan Glazer
Assimilation Today: Is One Identity Enough?
Roger Waldinger
The 21st Century: An Entirely New Story
Victor Nee, Richard Alba
Toward a New Definition

THE IMMIGRANT BARGAIN

Peter D. Salins
The Assimilation Contract – Endangered But Still Holding
Douglas S. Massey
The American Side of the Bargain

WHAT WORKS

Gregory Rodriguez
Mexican-Americans and the Mestizo Melting Pot
Min Zhou
Assimilation, the Asian Way
Alejandro Portes
For the Second Generation, One Step at a Time
Pete Hamill
The Alloy of New York

ECONOMICS AND POLITICS

Joel Kotkin
Toward a Post-Ethnic Economy
George J. Borjas
Economic Assimilation: Trouble Ahead
Amitai Etzioni
Assimilation to the American Creed
Peter Skerry
“This Was Our Riot, Too”: Political Assimilation Today

RACE: THE EXCEPTION OR THE RULE?

Stephen Steinberg
The Melting Pot and the Color Line
John McWhorter
Getting Over Identity

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AMERICAN

Michael Barone
New Americans After September 11
Stanley Crouch
Goose-Loose Blues for the Melting Pot
Gary Shteyngart
The New Two-Way Street
Tamar Jacoby
What It Means To Be American in the 21st Century

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

CONTRIBUTORS

Review of Samuel Huntington's "Who Are We?" Washington Post, 5-16-04
TALKING POINTS>>>

Book Info:

Available at
Amazon.com
ISBN: 0465036341
320 pages

Contact:

Lindsay Young Craig
Vice President
Communications & Marketing
Manhattan Institute
212-599-7000 Ext.315

Advance Praise:

“Europe’s failure to assimilate its Muslim minorities, painfully evident in the wake of the September 11 attacks, makes the urgency of this task all the more apparent for the United States. Reinventing the Melting Pot underscores why a common culture is problematic but of critical importance in making the American nation work.”
—Francis Fukuyama, author of THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN

“Although the debate is too frequently captured by bean-counters and economists, the issue of immigration and assimilation is probably the most important one we face, including terrorism, to which it is linked. We are either going to be a strong, united, proud, patriotic nation, or we will be in trouble and drag the rest of the world into bigger trouble still. Tamar Jacoby has put together a collection that should be read and studied by all those wish America well.”
—Ben Wattenberg, American Enterprise Institute

“Nowhere else can one find between two covers so many informed and engaged analyses of recent immigration in relation to social cohesion and political democracy.”
—David A. Hollinger, author of POSTETHNIC AMERICA

“America's relentlessly recombinant pool of genes and memes will confound any single ethnic group's attempts to own the mainstream—or to disown it. This lively and lucid book reminds us that being American means always becoming American, and it will help us appreciate the endless newness of our common identity.”
—Eric Liu, author of THE ACCIDENTAL ASIAN

“Reinventing the Melting Pot brings together many of America's top thinkers and writers to debate an old question that matters as much to our generation as it did to our great-grandparents.”
—John J. Miller, author of THE UNMAKING OF AMERICAN

“In recent years, Americans have been intensely looking for themselves, and for the first time in history there is no agreement whether we belong to our ancestral background or to the promises of the foreground that might enable us to become who we want to be. In Tamar Jacoby’s timely and valuable anthology, this profound question is explored by thinkers of all persuasions.”
—John Patrick Diggins, Distinguished Professor of History, Graduate Center, CUNY