Rating: 
Summary: Completely worthless
Review: Takaki's book is a wonderful example of how history should not be written. Takaki's attempt to portray a multicultural American history is weak and he accomplishes the opposite. He consistently describes every ethnic minority that has helped create America as nothing more than a victim of white aggression. Indeed the multicultural history of America is more complex than the simplified story of good and evil that Takaki tells. If one wishes to get a glimpse of realistic multicultural history I recommend forgetting about Takaki and instead reading Gary B. Nash's brilliant essay The Hidden History of Mestizo America.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: The author's writing is excellent, well researched and documented. It starts out with a "spring board" analogy from Shakespeare, showing how we can all be prone to prejudgement of someone whom we don't understand. From this we get the story of many of America's ethnic minorities, showing what a many portions of each ethnic group experienced.
I was assigned this book for a diverstiy class that I had to take in college. Too often authors will try and make whites out to be the devil. Takaki doesn't. If one understands this books to be an incomplete history (the history of minorities), then they can understand that it compliments dead-white dude's history well. Students of history need to make sure they are versed in both.
The books only limit is that he cannot show the diversity within certain ethnic groups. For example, not all members of a certain ethnic group bore the same experiences. Although limited in that sense, it would take volumes of books to tell the story of each ethnic group in each region. So I don't hold that against him. Plus -- I would like it if he would focus a little more on the friendships that occur between ethnic groups. Those examples which make us proud of our past and give us hope for the future.
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent book
Review: The book may be unsettling because it doesn't put middle class people of European origin like me at the center of the story, and it presents negative as well as positive aspects of our history. That's why it is such a good book: it lets me look out from inside someone else's skin. The final chapter is no more "biased" than traditional histories - it just has a different "bias." Since we cannot escape bias, awareness of other biases may help us avoid thinking of our own biases as though they were universal. Takaki's scholarship is solid and his academic credentials impressive.
Rating:
Summary: Takaki has a very unique way of rxpressing American History
Review: The students in Mr. Andereck's class bought the book. Everyone was very interested in the book. We officially made this book as our textbook.
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly biased, inaccurate, and untruthful
Review: This book is a travesty and a testament to the ways in which the near militant multiculturalism of today's college campuses is effectively altering and distorting history to suit its political agenda. Isn't it Takaki's responsibility, as a History professor, to accurately portray history as it happened, and analyze it from a modern moral perspective, rather than letting that modern moral perspective rewrite history? How can a book that tries so hard to tell EVERYONE'S story completely exclude the experiences of America's largest ethnic group, German-Americans? How can Takaki possibly justify his depiction of Japanese-American soldiers as being the sole liberators of the Nazi concentration camps in Europe? If you know nothing about American History, don't read this book. If you think you're somewhat knowledgeable, read it just to see how biased it is.
Rating: 
Summary: I did not like this book.
Review: This book offers an average-at-best history of American culture. Although some of the heart of the book was interesting, most gave me a flashback to high school history class. There was very little new material. Also, the last chapter in the book was incredibly biased. Although I understand that historians are allowed to be biased, he places entirely too much blame on Ronald Reagan for part of the racial tension in America today. He almost glorifies the Rodney King riot for showing us how much racial tension there really was, and virtually claims Rodney King as some kind of hero. This riot was nothing short of immature. Overall I give the book a 3/10 because it did offer some interesting facts about the early history of diversity in America, but eventually I believe he wandered from his point in the last chapters by pointing fingers.
Rating:
Summary: What they didn't teach you in grade school...
Review: This is an excellent multi-cultural account of American history. Takaki focuses on the perspectives of many different cultural groups, providing several interesting, unique and sometimes sobering stories of America's history. After reading this book, you may find yourself feeling cheated by your grade school history lessons. This work is fair, honest, and *VERY* well documented, with endnote references on almost every page. I don't believe Takaki has a score to settle with this book. Nor do I believe he is racist or *overly* slanted, but I can see how some might feel that way. His focus on nontraditional perspectives seems to me an effort to balance the scale a bit by emphasizing the viewpoints, stories and facts that have been under-emphasized in the past. Perspectives include those of the Irish, Japanese, blacks, Native Americans, and others as various times throughout American history. To me, Takaki does a very good job of putting the reader in the mindset of the people at a certain place and time. Stories in this book are not sugar-coated, which may at times be unsettling, but the facts and research that back the stories up are indisputable. Takaki uses many direct quotes and indirect references to underscore his points. His accounts are credible, believable and educational. This book should be required reading in all high schools, but should not be considered a replacement for traditional American history texts. It is more a book about cultural perspectives in history than about historical facts. As an example, Takaki will devote many pages to very specific events in history to catch a specific cultural perspective, while completely glazing over many larger and arguably more historically significant timeframes. The book is a good read, but because of several references, chapters should probably be read in order. For example, at the start of the book Takaki sets up the story of Shakespeare's Tempest as a point of comparison throughout. (It was tempting to me to skip around, since each perspective seems well encapsulated in a chapter.) I hope you enjoy it!
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