Table of Contents

Preface to the 2002 Edition
Chapter 1. Patterns in the Making
Chapter 2. The Age of Confidence
Chapter 3. Crisis in the Eighties
Chapter 4. The Nationalist Nineties
Chapter 5. The Return of Confidence
Chapter 6. Toward Racism: The History of an Idea
Chapter 7. The Loss of Confidence
Chapter 8. War and Revolution
Chapter 9. Crusade for Americanization
Chapter 10. The Tribal Twenties
Chapter 11. Closing the Gates
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliographical note
Index

About the Author

John Higham taught at the University of California at Los Angeles, Rutgers, Columbia, and the University of Michigan before returning to teach at his alma mater, Johns Hopkins, as John Martin Vincent Professor of History in 1971. He was the author of Hanging Together: Unity and Diversity in American Culture (2001). 

Reviews

This book attempts a general history of the anti-foreign spirit that I have defined as nativism. It tries to show how American nativism evolved its own distinctive patterns, how it has ebbed and flowed under the pressure of successive impulses in American history, how it has fared at every social level and in every section where it left a mark, and how it has passed into action. Fundamentally, this remains a study of public opinion, but I have sought to follow the movement of opinion wherever it led, relating it to political pressures, social organization, economic changes, and intellectual interests.
*from the Preface*

An exciting, mature volume, a tightly knit narrative that progresses with all the momentum of adventure fiction, the sparkling prose of a gifted writer, the sweeping generalization of a seasoned scholar. It is a stimulating appraisal of one phase of the American mind during its growth to maturity.
*Saturday Review*

. . . a brilliantly executed study . . . an exceedingly able piece of historical research and analysis.
*New York Times Book Review*

. . . a tempered handling of a passionate theme . . . an important contribution.
*Journal of American History*

HighamÆs scholarly study of the ebb and flow of restrictive immigration since the Civil War has succeeded so admirably that it truly illuminates our times.
*American Journal of Sociology*