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Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful overview by an awe-inspiring mind!
Review: I wish all books could be like this one. To be sure, Sowell does have an ideology of sorts (being a small 'l' libertarian) but the facts are legitimately objective. One gets facts and stats first and only later the concluding opinion.
Nowadays, it is easy to label any 'compartmentalized' ethnic history as racist. After all, we are all equal right? Sowell argues albeit indirectly that equality exists in a legal sense, but that ethnic groups have undeniable differences. Sowell does not present this as a positive or negative. It just is, and as with any generalization, there are numerous exceptions.
I'm Scottish and Irish. I guess if I was a modern liberal, I would've taken offense to his historical observation that the irish are unusually hot-tempered and have not through history put a huge value on education. The problem is that history shows it to be true. The liberal mistake is to think that a generalization of any kind must be taken personally (ie: because the irish through history have been hot-tempered and because I'm irish, Mr. Sowell must be implying that I have a bad temper.) Mr. Sowell means nothing of the kind. The beauty of equality under law is that generalizations do not apply. This is the problem with liberal policy. Affirmitive action and quotas are based on generalizations (something liberals say they avoid). The generalization is that minority group A can not succeed without the quota, or that all people save for minority group A, have a predisposition against minority group A.
So the beauty of this book lies in it's objectivity. Mr. Sowell shows history as it is. No idealism. No opinion on how things ought to be, disguised as fact. Simply a real glimpse at the history of ethnic America. Hooray for America!
Rating:
Summary: great work on ethnic groups
Review: Sowell does a really great job of detailing various different groups of people that have come to our country and whey they have done so. This is continued bu discussing their lives after they start to live here. It seems that Sowell covers a lot of the big groupsl like Africans, Germans, Italians, Japanese, Puero Ricans, Mexicans and Jews. Such a book is important because it helps us to understand our shared background as Americans. There are similirities why our ancestors came here as well as prejudice and discrimination faced by all at one time or another. It gives hope for the future because through history that groups become more accepted in society as time passes and groups become part of the melting part.
Rating: 
Summary: Great social history
Review: this book recounts the history of a few groups in the US. One of them is the Irish, to which I belong. In this respect, it's a great book...one of the reasons I think this is because this book tells you why the Liberty Bell that we were all told about in school was rung for the first time, only to crack.Correction of one of Mr Sowell's statements: Tsar Nicholas II was not the tsar that freed the serfs of Russia. It was his grandfather, Tsar Aleksandr I, the "Tsar-Liberator," who was murdered by revolutionaries in 1881. Great book - interesting, factual, a great window on how various ethnic groups changed America, and how America changed them.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Have Book!
Review: This book was required reading for my undergraduate degree. It was probably one of the most interesting and informative books I read at the time and I've kept Sowell's book for more than 14 years! I found the journey for many who have immigrated to the USA facinating and I've learned so much more about their cultures from this one book. It has remained a staple on my bookshelf at work but today I noticed that it was missing (someone must have "borrowed" it). I am ordering another copy!
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