There could not be a more timely book for the 2016 US presidential election and its aftermath. Lawrence McAndrews's work provides much-needed nuance and context for America's passionate debate over immigration. Rising above the cacophony of political platforms and media quips, the author makes an original contribution to Catholic scholarship on the issue. Unlike other books that focus either on Catholic Social Thought or federal immigration policy, the author blends these voices together by reconstructing a multilayered conversation between US Catholic bishops and five American presidents during the past forty years. McAndrews charts this dialogue from the Hesburgh Commission and Reagan's Immigration Reform and Control Act (1986) to Obama's executive implementation of parts of the DREAM Act (2012) and the precarious state of his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA) after the 2013 government shutdown. For sources, the author turns to the archives, unearthing documents from presidential libraries and the collected papers of various senators and federal offices. Catholic scholars have hitherto overlooked these vital archival sources, and McAndrews's political side of the story is something decidedly missing from most Catholic scholarship on the subject. His further ability to articulate the bishops’ perspective is remarkable, especially when one considers that the archival collections of the United States Conference of Catholics Bishops are currently unavailable for this time period. The book's central argument will none the less raise eyebrows. McAndrews argues that the bishops ultimately thwarted, or at least obstructed, political progress on immigration reform by remaining ‘doggedly dogmatic’ in their insistence on legalisation or amnesty, neglecting public (and popular Catholic) opinion that demanded tighter border control as an essential condition of any reform (p. 214). Overall the bishops come off as aloof to both the concerns of their flock and the politics of pragmatic compromise. To be fair, the book attempts to present the theological and pastoral reasons behind the bishops’ insistence on legalisation and family reunification (especially for Latino Catholics). However, papal pressure on the USCCB remains underdeveloped, and one finds no trace of Pope John Paul ii’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation, Ecclesia in America (1999). This document set the framework for a more ‘hemispheric’ and transnational vision of Catholicism and migration in the Americas, a template informing both conservative and liberal US bishops in their joint push for family justice in immigration reform. Nevertheless, the author masterfully pinpoints continuities and shifts in immigration reform between the 1980s and today, and the reader discovers how campaign rhetoric has often clouded the consistent immigration policy of presidents from both sides of the political spectrum (particularly regarding deportation). Scholars of Catholic theology, US history or political theory would be remiss to overlook this book, and college professors should consider this work for courses on immigration or American Catholicism. An index is included.