Description:
Michael Barone of U.S. News & World Report is one of the smartest political writers in the country. In addition to his journalism, Barone is the coauthor of the biannual Almanac of American Politics--an essential tome for inside-the-Beltway pundits and other political junkies--as well as the curiously underappreciated Our Country, an excellent history of the United States from FDR to Reagan. In The New Americans, Barone brings his vast knowledge and sharp talents to the ever-present dilemmas of race and ethnicity. As millions of immigrants stream into the United States from around the globe--including many countries that traditionally have not served as sources of immigration--Barone helpfully calms jittery nerves about cultural transformation: "We are not in a wholly new place in American history. We've been here before." In fact, we were here at the last turn of the century, when newcomers from Ireland, southern Europe, and elsewhere flocked through Ellis Island. "Many learned savants predicted a hundred years ago that the immigrants of their day could never be assimilated, that they would never undertake the civic obligations and adapt to the civic culture of the United States. History has proven them wrong," writes Barone. "We need to learn from America's success in assimilating these earlier immigrants, as well as from the mistakes that were made along the way." The bulk of the book is a set of comparative studies outlining the surprising similarities as well as the differences between Irish immigrants and today's African Americans, between Italians and Hispanics, and between Jews and Asians. In each instance, Barone believes the experiences of the former reveal something about the latter as its members struggle to adapt to their new home. The approach is like the one Thomas Sowell took many years ago in his landmark book Ethnic America; in many ways, The New Americans is a much-needed update of that pioneering work. What's most compelling about The New Americans, however, is how Barone's own politics, which lean to the right, find a welcoming place for this new wave of immigrants, contra Pat Buchanan and a certain type of conservative. "What is important now is to discard the notion that we are at a totally new place in American history, that we are about to change from a white-bread nation to a collection of peoples of color," concludes Barone. "The descendents of the new Americans of today can be as much an integral part of their country, and as capable of working their way into its highest levels, as the descendents of the new Americans of a hundred years ago." --John Miller
| 
