About this ebook
“Peter D. Salins... anticipates a multicultural America, but the prospect causes him great distress. In his view, the old assimilationist formula served both immigrants and the nation extremely well.... Salins maintains... that the multiculturalist effort to renegotiate America’s traditional assimilationist contract — English as the national language, liberal democratic principles and the Protestant work ethic — is at the root of much contemporary anxiety over immigration.” — Peter Skerry, The New York Times
“Peter Salins’s book... is a labor of love as much as of scholarship... Salins’s whole effort here is to defend the American model of high immigration levels accompanied by unforced but almost irresistible assimilation... [His] diagnosis is powerful and persuasive, and surely the first step is the one he takes: to understand how and why the American model worked so well, and how it is now being threatened.” — Elliot Abrams, The Public Interest
“A thorough and convincing examination of assimilation in America: how it worked in the past, why it is necessary for the survival of the nation, and what to do about the recent and ominous assault on it... The author is superb in defining what constitutes assimilation... He also deftly explodes several myths about immigration. Past waves of immigrants, for instance, never surrendered their heritage and continued to speak their native tongue in their neighborhoods. Assimilation, he argues, is a gradual process and doesn’t necessitate abandoning one’s ethnic identity at the door... his book is pragmatic and solid, and should convince many of the value and continuing importance of assimilation.” — Kirkus
“[A]n enlightening... book.” — Wall Street Journal
“Salins... seeks a middle way between radical multiculturalism and resurgent nativism. That middle way is the ‘immigration contract’ that has long existed between American society and its newcomers. Its terms are a commitment to English as the national language, an acceptance of American values and ideals, and a dedication to the Protestant work ethic. Immigrants who accept these terms are welcomed and allowed to maintain certain elements of their culture, such as food, dress, and holidays. This arrangement, Salins argues, promotes a vibrant ethnicity while protecting against balkanizing ethnocentrism.” — Stephen J. Rockwell, Wilson Quarterly
About the author
Born in Berlin, Germany in 1938, Peter Daniel Salins immigrated to New York as an infant and spent most of his childhood years in the city’s New Jersey suburbs. He earned degrees in architecture and urban planning from Syracuse University, and after practicing architecture in Cambridge, Massachusetts for some years, returned to Syracuse to earn a doctorate in metropolitan studies in 1969. Salins then embarked on an academic career as professor of urban planning and policy and as an academic administrator.
In 1968, Salins joined the urban planning faculty of Hunter College of the City University of New York, becoming chairman of the department in 1973. In 1997, Salins was appointed Provost and Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs of the State University of New York System, a position he held until 2006, when he was appointed University Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook University, where he has been administering and teaching in its graduate public policy program.
Salins wrote and edited six books, including Assimilation, American Style, and numerous articles, monographs and opinion pieces. He has appeared frequently on radio and television in discussions of immigration, housing policy and the economic and social future of American cities, with a particular focus on New York City. Assimilation, American Style cuts across all of these policy issues, because the success of New York and most other American metropolitan areas has always depended on the successful integration of immigrants into their economic and social fabric. Salins has been an editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association and of City Journal.
