Author biography, blank leaf and back cover

Ronald Takaki is one of the preeminent scholars of our nation's diversity. He is a Professor Emeritus of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught over 20,000 students during thirty-six years of teaching. The grandson of immigrant Japanese plantation laborers in Hawaii, Takaki graduated from the College of Wooster, Ohio, in 1961. Six years later, after receiving his Ph.D. in American History from UC Berkeley, he went to UCLA to teach its first Black History course. In 1972, Professor Takaki returned to Berkeley to teach in the newly instituted Department of Ethnic Studies. His comparative approach to the study of race and ethnicity provided the conceptual framework for the B.A. program and the Ph.D. program in Comparative Ethnic Studies as well as for the university's multicultural requirement for graduation, known as the American Cultures Requirement.

HISTORY / MULTICULTURAL STUDIES A Back Bay Bol

"A splendid achievement, a bold and refreshing new approach to our national history. The research is meticulous, the writing powerful and eloquent, with what can only be called an epic sweep across time and cultures." _

-HOW ARD ZINN, author of A People's History of the United States

IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, the changing colors of our country'~

population challenge the notion of America as a nation settled by European immi•

grants. Demography is declaring, We come from many different backgrounds! But how

and why did we get to be such a uniquely diverse people, belonging to a democracy

dedicated to the "self-evident truth" of equality?

In this landmark work, which spans the years from the 1607 founding of Jamestown

to the present, Ronald Takaki dramatically retells American history from the bottom up,

through the lives of many minorities - Native Americans, African Americans, Jewish

Americans, Irish Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, and others - who

helped create this country's mighty economy and rich mosaic culture.

This revised edition encompasses compelling new passages on FDR's response to th~

Holocaust, the post-Vietnam War influx of Southeast Asians, Muslim refugees from wan

. torn Afghanistan, and immigrants pushed northward by poverty in Mexico. A Dijfere1'

Mirror brilliantly illuminates our country's defining strengths as it reveals America as

a nation peopled by the world.

"An excellent place to start in understanding how this uniquely diverse country came to be and where it is headed." -CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

"One closes the book with a deepened sense of the centrality of ethnicity in the American past." - WASHINGTON POST

RON AL D TAKAKI is an emeritus professor of Ethnic Studies at the

University of California, Berkeley. His critically acclaimed books include

Iron Cages, Strangers from a Different Shore, Hiroshima, A Larger Memory, and Double Victory.

Cover design by Julianna Lee Cover illustration: And Long May She Wave e 1987, Sandra McHenry Author photograph by Carol Takaki Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

Printed in the U.S.A. 2008 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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$17.99 I $19.99 in Canada ISBN 978-0-316-02236-1

51799)

9 780316 022361 I