Right-wing reporters and tabloids warned their public about a wave of immigrants who were “a sullen, disappointed, disillusioned mass of people,” a collection of drug users, “natural cop haters,” and criminals responsible for a “massive crime wave,” who “brought disease and came for the welfare benefits” (23). Even though these statements may sound like the talking points of most right-wing media outlets, politicians, and elected officials in present-day United States, they were made decades ago by New York City reporters about the postwar Puerto Rican migration to the United States mainland. This makes this new book both timely and relevant. It also validates Thomas and Lauria-Santiago's argument regarding the continuity of the struggle for Puerto Rican rights and how it is part of much larger historical processes.

As part of a series exploring social and political movements, Thomas and Lauria Santiago's work is offered as a survey of Puerto Rican political and social activism in the second half of the twentieth century. The authors combine a vast and diverse literature with archival material from 13 repositories, and place them within the appropriate historical global, national, local, and community context to provide a thorough and complex analysis of these processes.

Central to the book's arguments is that the Puerto Rican rights movement was not a monolith emerging during a short period between the 1960s and 1970s. Instead, it was built upon a much older civil rights’ struggle—a point the authors convincingly demonstrate in the first chapter. Equally important is that while a movement in its own right, Puerto Rican political and social activism is also part of broader processes, as they demonstrate in every chapter. Still, “varied conceptions of what it meant to be Puerto Rican in the United States” gave guidance to “evolving coalitions of workers, intellectuals, aspiring politicians and artists, students and educators, professional and unemployed youth” who came together to fight against the people and institutions obstructing “the expansion of Puerto Rican communities and their civil rights” (3). Thus, even though Thomas and Lauria Santiago put their subject of study within the appropriate context, they do not lose sight of its uniqueness. Moreover, they bravely present their historical narrative as an American history. This is to be commended, as recent scholarship in Puerto Rican Studies fails to acknowledge this fact, resulting in decontextualized academic production.

The authors begin by acknowledging Puerto Rican leftist activist Jesús Colón's pragmatism and his penchant for creating consensus and building coalitions. In fact, the book title is a word play from a speech Colón delivered in the mid 1950s. Their assessment of Jesús Colón is used as a lens to understand the metamorphosis of the Puerto Rican rights movement with a focus on concrete, daily life issues (5). These issues included financial security, equal opportunities for socioeconomic improvement and status, and recognition and respect of their cultural traditions, which could be attained only through “equal employment opportunities, freedom from discrimination, and basic integration into American society,” and access to quality education and housing (5, 13-18, 22-27). These activists benefited by tapping into existing strong unions and a leftist movement of progressives and liberals sympathetic to the Puerto Ricans’ plight.

History recognizes both continuity and change over time. And perhaps that is Thomas and Lauria-Santiago's most important contribution to Puerto Rican and American historiography and our understanding of social and political activism in the twentieth century. As they remind us, the Puerto Rican struggle has been constant “but the motivations that guided them and the strategies they developed” to meet challenges, racism, discrimination, and inequality “were constantly changing” in response to a changing context. including shifting economic opportunities and the forming and breaking up of alliances (194).

Thomas and Lauria-Santiago went beyond their intention of surveying this topic. Instead, they produced an encompassing narrative that will leave the reader with a deep understanding of the struggle for Puerto Rican rights.