Four editors and thirteen additional American and Dutch scholars worked to produce this intriguing and expertly crafted book that explores “the nexus of immigrant incorporation and urban form and structure” in order to understand the immigrant experience (2). New York and Amsterdam takes up and sharpens comparative studies of immigrants across continents that preceded it, such as Samuel Baily's Immigrants in the Lands of Promise: Italians in Buenos Aires and New York City (1999) and Judith Rainhorn's Paris, New York: Des migrants italiens (2005). It opens with a careful survey of the way these two world cities – both attractive to immigrants – differ from one another in age, in scale, and in state welfare services. Perhaps most importantly, each has a distinct immigration history. The volume argues that these profoundly different histories make a great difference to the fate of newcomers.

American and Dutch scholars bring distinct concerns to the study of immigration that show up here: American academics are predictably concerned with race, Dutch academics with religion – or more specifically the “Islamophobia” that has become central to public discourse. Unlike US scholars, the Dutch readily focus on the role of the state. Differences in scholarly practices and in the cities themselves make for an unusually revelatory set of comparisons because they bring to light dimensions of the immigrant experience that would be overlooked in a study of one city by scholars trained in that country. For example, to read about immigration to Amsterdam as a seventeenth-century phenomenon that subsequently faded is to be reminded of the importance of more recent historical memory in New York; to read about the arts in Amsterdam as treasures of European civilization is to be reminded of the vitality of contemporary arts in New York.

Thanks to the ingenious organization of this study, the reader is able to explore five questions, each via a short introduction, an essay on New York, and an essay on Amsterdam: (1) How has the immigrant past shaped the immigrant present in New York City and Amsterdam? (2) What difference does the urban economy make to immigrant incorporation? (3) Is Islam in Amsterdam like race in New York City? (4) How are immigrants entering the precincts of power in New York City and Amsterdam? (5) How are the children of immigrants shaped by, but also changing, New York City's and Amsterdam's cultural life? They give an impressive breadth to this volume and, more importantly, they reveal aspects of each city that would not become apparent without comparison.

Because both the cities and the scholarship about them are distinct, the paired essays rarely match in the questions they pose. However, the richness and appropriateness of each contribution compensates for this apparent disadvantage. The section “Is Islam in Amsterdam like Race in New York City?” may demonstrate this most effectively. The introduction explains why the history of slavery in the US brings an importance to race that is unthinkable in the Netherlands, where ideology about race reverberates with painful histories of World War II. (Nonetheless immigrants’ schools and neighborhoods are identified by the adjective “black.”) Mary Waters makes the useful distinction between nativism and racism, demonstrating that while nativism lacks the strength in New York City that in the past it has had there and retains in some parts of the country, racism remains a notable obstacle for American blacks as well as for West Indians and Hispanics. Waters presents the data delineating a racial and ethnic hierarchy of native and foreign-born blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and whites. Justice Uitermark, Jan Willem Duyvendak, and Jan Rath take on the question of Islam in Amsterdam by delineating the efforts made by Mayor Job Cohen (2001–10) to combat Islamophobia with a set of civil institutions that encouraged liberal Islam. The promotion of integration is a concept de rigueur in Europe, they explain, in this case the object of programs for Muslims and public education for non-Muslims. Reactions to these programs, along with the economic downturn of 2008, ended the programs and ousted Cohen.

At first glance, these two essays are talking past each other, each addressing its own nation with its own vocabulary and scholarly concerns. Of course, this is true to a limited extent, but two advantages come of the twinned essays: first, the reader sees race in New York City in the context of its particular population and Islam as the crucial dimension it provides to the experience of Turks and Moroccans in Amsterdam. In both cases, there is significant change in the past two decades and each essay teaches the reader about the most obdurately disadvantaged group in a society. Second, each essay demonstrates how crucial is the history of each city.

I contend that this is the major contribution of the volume. Although only one historian numbers among the contributors, each of the ten essays makes it clear that the histories of past immigrants are crucial to those of today. Particular debts are owed to the Italians and Jews of turn-of-the-twentieth-century New York City who founded institutions and cultural practices that aid today's immigrants and their children. In each of the five sections of this fascinating book, it is the twinned essays that reveal most about divergent histories.