Potowski & Cameron’s volume is a compilation of 21 essays originally presented at the 20th Conference on Spanish in the United States and the 5th International Conference on Spanish in Contact with Other Languages in 2005. Organized around five themes representing current interests in the fields of U.S. Spanish and Spanish contact, the volume includes original investigations of Spanish varieties in the United States, Spain, and Latin America that employ current empirical, archival, and experimental methodologies. Taken together, the chapters provide a fairly broad, up-to-date look at U.S. Spanish and Spanish contact, making the volume useful for both reference and teaching.

The volume begins with three chapters focusing on issues related to Spanish as a heritage language. Carmen Silva-Corvalán & Noelia Sánchez-Walker present a case study on the acquisition of subject expressions during bilingual language development. Silvina A. Montrul examines bilinguals’ interpretations of mood expressions in obligatory and optional contexts, and Francisco Moreno-Fernández investigates the influence of anglicisms in the lexicon of bilingual Hispanics in Chicago.

Part II, “Education and policy,” contains contributions by Maria M. Carreira on teaching strategies in mixed-ability Spanish classes, Lourdes Torres on the impact of language policy on the bilingualism of U.S. and island Puerto Ricans, Manuel Triano-López on the promotion of non-Spanish lexicon in Valencian, and Verónica Loureiro-Rodríguez on the effects of standardized Galician on the diglossic situation of Galicia.

In Part III, “Pragmatics and contact,” chapters attend to bilingual speech and code-switching (Janet M. Fuller, Minta Elsman, & Kevan Self), stylistic variation and the use of discourse markers by heritage speakers (Ana Sánchez-Muñoz), and the expressive uses of code-switching (Linda Ohlson). The final two chapters in this section deal with discursive/pragmatic issues resulting from contact situations, including Quechua epistemic influence on Andean Spanish (Marilyn S. Manley) and multiple-negation patterns among Haitian Creole/Spanish bilinguals (Luis A. Ortiz López).

Part IV addresses Spanish variation and contact. Anna María Escobar discusses the efficacy of historical bilingual texts in tracing the origins of Andean Spanish. The other chapters in this section provide new insights on some of the most frequently studied variables in Spanish sociolinguistics. Kimberly L. Geeslin & Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes take up the issue of copula choice among monolingual speakers of Galician Spanish; Ricardo Otheguy and Ana Celia Zentella present their findings on pronominal subject expression in six dialects of Spanish spoken in New York City; and Nydia Flores-Ferrán discusses narrative conditioning on tense selection among New York City Puerto Ricans. Rafael Orozco reports on the linguistic factors constraining the expression of futurity by speakers of Colombian Spanish. Jessi Elana Aaron & José Esteban Hernández provide evidence for the reduction of /s/ aspiration among Salvadorans in contact with Mexican speakers, and Michelle L. Salazar revisits copula variation in New Mexico Spanish.

The volume concludes with two chapters focusing on bozal Spanish. John M. Lipski provides a thorough overview of current literature on bozal varieties, focusing in particular on unique data sources such as return-diaspora speakers and ritualized folklore. William A. Megenney explores the literary representation of bozal varieties in the works of several Cuban and Brazilian authors. The editors have produced a highly readable volume addressing a wide range of issues and contact situations of interest to scholars in linguistics, education, and Latino Studies.