America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States [Paperback]

The definitive history of American xenophobia 

A sweeping record of xenophobia in the U.S., highlighting the different ways minority groups have been humiliated, discriminated against and even deported. Time

The United States is known as a nation of immigrants. But it is also a nation of xenophobia. InAmerica for Americans, Erika Lee shows that an irrational hostility toward immigrants has always been a defining feature of our nation. Benjamin Franklin ridiculed Germans for their strange and foreign ways. Americans anxiety over Irish Catholics turned xenophobia into a national political movement. Chinese immigrants were excluded, Japanese incarcerated, Mexicans deported, and Muslims banned.

Forcing us to confront this history, Lee explains how xenophobia works, why it has endured, and how it threatens America.America for Americansis an urgent spur to action for any concerned citizen.

Erika Leeis the Bae Family Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard University. A past president of the Organization of American Historians, she is the author ofThe Making of Asian Americaand other award-winning books.

"This sweeping account draws parallels between Benjamin Franklin's worry over 'swarthy' Germans 'herding together' in the eighteenth century and Donald Trump's race-baiting today. Xenophobia, Lee argues, has been an indelible 'American tradition,' deployed to social and political ends since the country's founding. A manifesto as much as a history, the book shows how every large immigrant group since Franklin's time-Irish, Chinese, Italian, Mexican, Middle Eastern-was 'scripted' by populist demagogues as alien and threatening."New Yorker"Including everything from Chinese Exclusion to recent travel bans,America for Americansexposes the folly in argumenl)