Anyone who followed the 2004 presidential primaries will recollect the fumbling efforts of Democratic politicians to address the cameras in Spanish, whilst the Republicans made much noise in press conferences about President Bush's supposed fluency in the language, stemming from his time in Texas. But rather than the symbolic gestures made by Anglos to bring out the vote, the real indicator of Latino political progress since the 1960s has been the rising number of Latino politicians taking elected office at all levels, culminating (so far) in the victory of Antonio Villaraigosa in the 2005 Los Angeles mayoral election. Geron's accessible introductory text offers an exceedingly thorough, although not exactly rip-roaring, synthesis of the literature on Latino politics from Cesar Chavez to Proposition 187 and beyond, and would be a valuable inclusion for any introductory course charting the political history of the Latino population of the United States.

Divided, roughly speaking, into two parts – one on the history of Latino political power, one on how that power has been exercised once won – the author highlights and discusses the many diverse groups that the “Latino” designation contains. He is well aware of the contradictory political impulses that underpin different subgroups and takes care to highlight the many variations of class, gender and national origin. However, he believes that “a common political legacy has been formed by their collective experiences and identity” (4), and provides some (albeit only indicative) evidence to substantiate this. The result is a fairly upbeat assessment: if Geron stresses that the struggle for political incorporation is far from over (205), he also combines the demographic and political patterns of the past few decades to imply that there is a fairly promising future for Latino politics.

Generally speaking, the observations within the book are uncontroversial. This is largely because it lacks a central argument. The author emphasizes his use of “political incorporation theory” early on, but in reality this is used as little more than a schema and certainly does not offer a new way of viewing Latino politics. Moreover, abstraction from the narrative is infrequent. As such, despite the author's extensive primary interviews with contemporary Latino activists and politicians, there is not that much which is especially surprising or thought-provoking. Nevertheless, in a text of just over two hundred pages, its thoroughness is impressive; the case studies of Chapters Six and Seven are particularly interesting; and as jumping-off point for students beginning to learn about Latino politics in America, the book would be useful indeed.