Reinventing the Melting Pot

Nothing happening in America today will do more to affect our children's future than the wave of new immigrants flooding into the country mostly from the developing world. Already one in ten Americans is foreign-born and if one counts their children one-fifth of the population can be considered immigrants. Will these newcomers make it in the U.S? Or will today's realities -- from identity politics to cheap and easy international air travel -- mean that the age-old American tradition of absorption and assimilation no longer applies? Reinventing the Melting Pot is a conversation among two dozen of the thinkers who have looked longest and hardest at the issue of how immigrants assimilate: scholars journalists and fiction writers on both the left and the right. The contributors consider virtually every aspect of the issue and conclude that of course assimilation can and must work again -- but for that to happen we must find new ways to think and talk about it. Contributors to Reinventing the Melting Pot include Michael Barone Stanley Crouch Herbert Gans Nathan Glazer Michael Lind Orlando Patterson Gregory Rodriguez and Stephan Thernstrom.>