Distributed to some depository libraries in microfiche.

Asian-American Education: Historical Background and Current Realities fills a gap in the study of the social and historical experiences of Asians in U.S. schools. It is the first historical work to provide American readers with information about highly individual ethnic groups rather than viewing distinctly different groups as one vague, global entity such as "Asians." The people who populate each chapter are portrayed as active participants in their history rather than as passive victims of their culture. Each of the twelve country-specific chapters begins with a description of the kind of education received in the home country, including how widely available it was, how equal or unequal the society was, and what were the circumstances under which the emigration of children from the country occurred. The latter part of each of these chapters deals with the education these children have received in the United States. Throughout the book, instead of dwelling on a relatively narrow range of children who perform spectacularly well, the author tries to discover the educational situation typical among average students. The order of chapters is roughly chronological in terms of when the first sizable numbers of immigrants came from a specific country.

In recent years, few federal requirements have been as controversial as the mandate for what critics call 'bilingual ballots'. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 included a permanent requirement for language assistance for Puerto Rican voters educated in Spanish and ten years later Congress banned English-only elections in certain covered jurisdictions, expanding the support to include Alaska Natives, American Indians, Asian-language voters and Spanish-language voters. Some commentators have condemned the language assistance provisions, underlying many of their attacks with anti-immigrant rhetoric. Although the provisions have been in effect for over three decades, until now no comprehensive study of them has been published. This book describes the evolution of the provisions, examining the evidence of educational and voting discrimination against language minorities covered by the Act. Additional chapters discuss the debate over the 2006 amendments to the Voting Rights Act, analysis of objections raised by opponents of bilingual ballots and some of the most controversial components of these requirements, including their constitutionality, cost and effectiveness. Featuring revealing case studies as well as analysis of key data, this volume makes a persuasive and much-needed case for bilingual ballots, presenting a thorough investigation of this significant and understudied area of election law and American political life.

For generations, visitors, journalists, and social scientists alike have asserted that Chicago is the quintessentially American city. Indeed, the introduction to "The New Chicago" reminds us that to know America, you must know Chicago. The contributors boldly announce the demise of the city of broad shoulders and the transformation of its physical, social, cultural, and economic institutions into a new Chicago. In this wide-ranging book, twenty scholars, journalists, and activists, relying on data from the 2000 census and many years of direct experience with the city, identify five converging forces in American urbanization which are reshaping this storied metropolis. The twenty-six essays included here analyze Chicago by way of globalization and its impact on the contemporary city; economic restructuring; the evolution of machine-style politics into managerial politics; physical transformations of the central city and its suburbs; and race relations in a multicultural era. In elaborating on the effects of these broad forces, contributors detail the role of eight significant racial, ethnic, and immigrant communities in shaping the character of the new Chicago and present ten case studies of innovative governmental, grassroots, and civic action. Multifaceted and authoritative, "The New Chicago" offers an important and unique portrait of an emergent and new Windy City.