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Making Americans : Immigration, Race, and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy
Making Americans Immigration Race and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy Author:Desmond King In the nineteenth century, virtually anyone could get into the United States. But by the 1920s, U.S. immigration policy had become a finely filtered regime of selection. Desmond King looks at this dramatic shift, and the debates behind it, for what they reveal about the construction of an "American" identity. Making Americans shows how the choic... more »es made about immigration policy in the 1920s played a fundamental role in shaping democracy and ideas about group rights in America. "King has written a subtle analysis of the construction of American identity in the 20th century … Highly recommended." —Anthony O. Edwards, Library Journal "[King's] deeply researched and closely reasoned book has ambitions well beyond its immediate subject … His principal focus is on the reception that American society extended to immigrants and prospective immigrants, and with what that reception shows about American self-perceptions and national identity … Making Americans is part history, part cultural commentary, part policy prescription." —David Kennedy, London Review of Books« less