Between 1897 and 1933 the presidents of the United States joined progressive reformers in redefining the concept of the United States as a melting pot. Their use of this metaphor to describe assimilation never meant that immigrants had to completely abandon their ethnic cultures. Instead, they argued that the melting pot blended the best of the immigrants traits and traditions to create a new American race united by patriotism and committed to liberal political and economic ideals. While nativists regarded new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe as incapable of assimilation, the presidents celebrated immigrant contributions to America and emphasized the need to improve immigrants' lives through education, resettlement away from urban ghettoes, and economic uplift. The president's speeches, letters, and administrative records reveal consistent support for the melting pot model as an alternative to nativist racism. While McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson supported the exclusion of racial aliens and those with mental or physical illness, they repeatedly praised the new immigrants for embracing American ideals while maintaining their ethnic cultures. They argued that everyone should be judged by their moral character rather than their ancestry. World War I raised fears of disloyal aliens that Roosevelt and Wilson heightened by denouncing hyphenated Americans. Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover continued to use melting pot rhetoric, however, rather than endorsing coercive assimilation. The melting pot legacy lives on, and still offers a middle ground between the demands for national unity and multiculturalism.

Immigration, Incorporation and Transition is an intriguing collection of articles and essays. It was developed to commemorate the twenty-fi fth anniversary of The Journal of American Ethnic History. Its purpose, like that of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, is to integrate interdisciplinary perspectives and exciting new scholarship on important themes and issues related to immigration and ethnic history.

The Trans-Mississippi Exposition of 1898 celebrated Omaha’s key economic role as a center of industry west of the Mississippi River and its arrival as a progressive metropolis after the Panic of 1893. The exposition also promoted the rise of the United States as an imperial power, at the time on the brink of the Spanish-American War, and the nation’s place in bringing “civilization” to Indigenous populations both overseas and at the conclusion of the recent Plains Indian Wars. The Omaha World’s Fair, however, is one of the least studied American expositions. Wendy Jean Katz brings together leading scholars to better understand the event’s place in the larger history of both Victorian-era America and the American West. The interdisciplinary essays in this volume cover an array of topics, from competing commercial visions of the cities of the Great West; to the role of women in the promotion of City Beautiful ideals of public art and urban planning; and the constructions of Indigenous and national identities through exhibition, display, and popular culture. Leading scholars T. J. Boisseau, Bonnie M. Miller, Sarah J. Moore, Nancy Parezo, Akim Reinhardt, and Robert Rydell, among others, discuss this often-misunderstood world’s fair and its place in the Victorian-era ascension of the United States as a world power.

This collection uses Theodore Roosevelt to form a fresh approach to the history of US and European relations, arguing that the best place to look for the origins of the modern transatlantic relationship is in Roosevelt's life and career.

From the books and heretics burnt on the pyres of the Inquisition to self-immolations at protest rallies, from the massive burning of oil on the global scale to inflammatory speech, from the imagery of revolutionary sparks ready to ignite the spirits of the oppressed to car bombings in the Middle East, fire proves to be an indispensable element of the political. To account for this elemental source of heat and light, Pyropolitics delineates a semantico-discursive field, replete with the literal and metaphorical mentions and uses of fires, flames, sparks, immolations, incinerations, and burning in political theory and practices. Relying on classical political theory, literature, theology, contemporary philosophy, and an analysis of current events, Michael Marder argues that geo-politics, or the politics of the Earth, has always had an unstable, at once shadowy and blinding, underside—pyropolitics, or the politics of fire. If this obscure double of geopolitics is, increasingly, dictating the rules of the game today, then it is crucial to learn to speak its language, to discern its manifestations, and to project where our world ablaze is heading.

From books and heretics burnt on the pyres of the Inquisition to self-immolations at protest rallies, from the burning of fossil fuels to inflammatory speech, from the imagery of revolutionary sparks ready to ignite the spirits of the oppressed to car bombings and “scorched earth” policy, fire proves to be an indispensable element of the political. Pyropolitics in the World Ablaze builds upon the scintillating, by turns horrifying and hopeful, images and realities of flames, hearths, sparks, immolations, melting pots, incinerations, and burning in political thought and practices. Relying on classical political theory, theology, philosophy, literature and cinema, as well as an analysis of current events, Michael Marder argues that geo-politics, or the politics of the Earth, has always had an unstable, at once shadowy and blinding, underside—pyro-politics, or the politics of fire. If this obscure double of geopolitics is increasingly dictating the rules of the game today, then it is crucial to learn to speak its language, to discern its manifestations and to project where our world ablaze is heading. This new edition includes recent examples of the uses and accusations of ‘incendiary speech’ both by Donald Trump and by European populist right and exploration of threats of global warming that have now reached a turning point in our collective relation to the dangers and promises of fire .

A new history exploring U.S. immigration in global context Histories investigating U.S. immigration have often portrayed America as a domestic melting pot, merging together those who arrive on its shores. Yet this is not a truly accurate depiction of the nation's complex connections to immigration. Offering a brand-new global history of the subject, Foreign Relations takes a comprehensive look at the links between American immigration and U.S. foreign relations. Donna Gabaccia examines America’s relationship to immigration and its debates through the prism of the nation’s changing foreign policy over the past two centuries. She shows that immigrants were not isolationists who cut ties to their countries of origin or their families. Instead, their relations to America were often in flux and dependent on government policies of the time. An innovative history of U.S. immigration, Foreign Relations casts a fresh eye on a compelling and controversial topic.

Understanding and Shaping Curriculum: What We Teach and Why introduces readers to curriculum as knowledge, curriculum as work, and curriculum as professional practice. Author Thomas W. Hewitt discusses curriculum from theoretical and practical perspectives to not only acquaint readers with the study of curriculum, but also help them to become effective curriculum practitioners.

As the United States struggled to absorb a massive influx of ethnically diverse immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century, the question of who and what an American is took on urgent intensity. It seemed more critical than ever to establish a definition by which Americanness could be established, transmitted, maintained, and judged. Americans of all stripes sought to articulate and enforce their visions of the nation’s past, present, and future; central to these attempts was President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt fully recognized the narrative component of American identity, and he called upon authors of diverse European backgrounds including Israel Zangwill, Jacob Riis, Elizabeth Stern, and Finley Peter Dunne to promote the nation in popular written form. With the swell and shift in immigration, he realized that a more encompassing national literature was needed to “express and guide the soul of the nation.” Rough Writing examines the surprising place and implications of the immigrant and of ethnic writing in Roosevelt’s America and American literature.