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For New York City's legacy as the symbol of America's immigrant heritage to last, New Yorkers have to learn about themselves, in order to help themselves integrate harmoniously. The authors are right to say: ""Those who truly love this great city believe that its future should and can be no less than its past."" The Village Voice Frederick Binder and David Reimers' wonderful new ethnic history of New York City... [is] an excellent work of synthesis, helping us to see familiar history in a new and instructive way, as well as a joy to read. The authors are particularly persuasive in making the case that New York's multiethnic present is essentially continuous with its past...As our country seeks new way to balance diveristy and equality, one wonders if this history might not provide some practical lessongs for the nation as a whole."" Newsday Despite the fact that New York (nee New Amsterdam) has long been on of the most racially and culturally heterogeneous cities in the world, few have tried to encompass this reality in a single study. For this reason and for many others relating to the narrative itself, this work is unique. It is a comprehensive, informative, and analytic survey--and a good read, too. Choice

A history of New York City as varied as the metropolis itself, focusing on the immigrants who throughout the centuries have harkened to America's call and remade New York in their own image. Historians Binder (College of Staten Island, CUNY; The Age of the Common School, 1974) and Reimer (New York Univ.; Still the Golden Door, 1985, etc.) trace New York from its earliest beginnings as a Dutch colony in the 1600s, when it was America's major port, to its present-day status as cultural mecca of the world. Nowhere has the vast diversity of the American populace been more in evidence than in New York City, assert the authors: The first and often final stop of Irish, German, and Jewish immigrants fleeing Europe's poverty and wars, this ragged little island off the Atlantic coast has served as a veritable birth canal for the nation's development. According to Binder and Reimer, New York showed signs of its multiethnic character from the very beginning under the Dutch, who were tolerant of religious refugees, ethnic and linguistic minorities, or political exiles. Tolerance didn't mean acceptance, but the benign force of early market capitalism, which valued profit above prejudice, insured that religious minorities like Jews and Catholics would be allowed all increasingly larger role in the American franchise. That dynamic, though not always benign, has survived to this day, reemerging during the recent waves of Asian and Caribbean immigration. The authors deftly juxtapose the experiences of various immigrant groups, explaining how a particular culture's mores and idioms aided or hindered its assimilation into American society. What they do not do is bring these powerful cultural, economic, and social forces to life in the everyday experience of individuals, focusing instead on the larger interplay of communities, cultures, and groups. Informative, but a little more human interest would have given color to all those historical and social generalizations. (Kirkus Reviews)

For New York City's legacy as the symbol of America's immigrant heritage to last, New Yorkers have to learn about the immigrants, about themselves, in order to help themselves integrate harmoniously. The authors are right to say: 'Those who truly love this great city believe that its future should and can be no less than its past.'

For New York City's legacy as the symbol of America's immigrant heritage to last, New Yorkers have to learn about themselves, in order to help themselves integrate harmoniously. The authors are right to say: Those who truly love this great city believe that its future should and can be no less than its past. * The Village Voice * Frederick Binder and David Reimers' wonderful new ethnic history of New York City... [is] an excellent work of synthesis, helping us to see familiar history in a new and instructive way, as well as a joy to read. The authors are particularly persuasive in making the case that New York's multiethnic present is essentially continuous with its past...As our country seeks new way to balance diveristy and equality, one wonders if this history might not provide some practical lessongs for the nation as a whole. * Newsday * Despite the fact that New York (nee New Amsterdam) has long been on of the most racially and culturally heterogeneous cities in the world, few have tried to encompass this reality in a single study. For this reason and for many others relating to the narrative itself, this work is unique. It is a comprehensive, informative, and analytic survey--and a good read, too. * Choice *

Author Information

Frederick Binder was a professor Emeritus of history at The City University of New York. David Reimers is professor emeritus in history at NYU. He is the co-author of Ethnic Americans: A History of Immigration (Columbia University Press, 2009) and Unwelcome Strangers: American Identity and the Turn Against Immigration (Columbia University Press, 1999). Robert Snyder is associate professor in the department of American Studies at Rutgers-Newark. He is the author of Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York City (Cornell University Press, 2014) and Transit Talk: New York's Bus and Subway Workers Tell Their Stories (Rutgers University Press, 1998). In addition to scholarly journals, his work has also been published in The Nation, the New York Times, the Columbia Journalism Review, and other general-interest publications.

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