In attempting to answer why minorities in Los Angeles pushed for social empowerment and how they accomplished this, City of Promise offers a series of race-specific chaptered overviews. Ironically, the net result is a structural arrangement which mirrors the problems it describes; mere occupancy within a city does not guarantee a singular identity for its citizenry, and such is the extent of this difficulty that City of Promise is itself a very loosely conjoined group of studies.

Possibly sensing this, some of the contributors try almost as hard as the minority groups to create an interracial synergy. Donald and Nadine Hata, for example, recount the formation of the Japanese–Mexican Labour Association (45) as a follow-on from Gloria E. Miranda's opening chapter on Mexican immigrant families. They also begin with a fascinating description of Asians in Mexico (39), but the potential of a conjoined transnational/subaltern investigation is not pursued. Elsewhere, Kenneth C. Burt notes the conflict of interests between African American grievances over police mistreatment and Latino political campaigning in the 1960s (188). This is informed by Martin Schiesl's prior chapter on social discontent and the Los Angeles police since 1950. By and large, though, as Los Angeles's racial groups have acted largely independently of one another, so also most of the book's chapters appear isolated as well. A secondary focus on whiteness might have rectified this, but it is not present.

Looking past this, the book is likely to be of use to scholars seeking a general narrative of Los Angeles's racial diversification. The narrow geographical remit also permits anecdotes and short biographical accounts to take central positions in what would be mere footnotes to regional or national studies. Although this textual levelling occasionally results in an annotated roll call of unsung heroes (100–01), with a consequentially dry tone and style, local historians will be well satisfied with the thoroughness. City of Promise focusses solidly upon legal, corporate and sociopolitical history within the minority communities and is divided into two parts: 1900–45 and post-1945. Though the text might have been rounded off by a glance toward women's roles within the communities, the book remains accessible to those with an interest in urban, Californian or minority history.