Not Like Us

In the thirty-five years after 1890, more than 20 million immigrants came to the United States - a greater number than in any comparable period before or since. Despite American mythology about "melting pots" and "tossed salads," the newcomers were often treated in hostile fashion. Tracing their experiences in confronting the forces of American nativism, Roger Daniels finds that a period of supposed progress was instead filled with conflict and xenophobia. If so many immigrants came to American shores in this period, how can it be called an age of nativism? "The answer," Mr. Daniels writes,…