Review by Choice Review
A fine scholarly collection that evokes the preWW I era when some 1,300 foreign-language newspapers served America's immigrant millions. It consists of essays by qualified scholars on the newspapers of 27 immigrant groups, ranging from the important German and Jewish presses to comparatively obscure ones such as Arabic, Danish, Portuguese, and Ukranian. In an interesting introduction, Miller (University of the Pacific, and managing editor of the Pacific Historian) calls the ethnic press the ``best primary source for an understanding of the world of non-English speaking groups in the United States.'' Immigration restriction and assimilation contributed to a long decline of these presses after 1920, but the Hispanic and Asian immigration of recent decades has generated ``a renaissance of the ethnic media.'' Yet, as Miller notes, this important source has been curiously neglected. The only full-scale monograph remains The Immigrant Press and Its Control (1922) by sociologist Robert M. Park. An important contribution toward remedying such neglect, this exemplary volume offers valuable references and suggestive interpretive insights to students of American journalism, immigration, urbanization, and ethnic studies. Each essay has a bibliography, and the volume as a whole is indexed.-P. Boyer, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
