This edited volume contains sixteen chapters, twelve of which are dedicated each to exploring the sociolinguistic situation of the twelve languages other than English most spoken in the US. Ch. 1 (Kim Potowski) provides the point of departure for the book. It is dedicated to dispelling the most common myths about languages and language diversity in the US. The structure and aims of the book are explained, most notably that the variables proposed by Giles, Bourhis, & Taylor (1977) will be used as a starting point in each case analysis to assess each group's ethnolinguistic vitality. Ch. 2 (Suzanne Romaine) explores language contact in the US, introducing and elaborating on key terminology from that field using examples from various languages. Ch. 3 (Teresa McCarty) globally assesses the situation of Native American languages in the US.

The chapters dedicated to the language-by-language analyses all have the same structure: an introductory section followed by a history of the language, its demographics in the US, its public presence (in the government, media, business, and education), and a section that explores the evidence of language shift to English, on the one hand, and the signs of maintenance of the language, on the other. All of the chapters close with brief concluding remarks. At the end of every chapter there are two questions for discussion on the issues raised in it. These chapters are ordered according to the number of speakers of the language in the US going from the highest to the lowest, according to the data from the 2000 Census: Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, French, Vietnamese, German, Korean, Russian, Italian, Arabic, Portuguese, and Polish. The closing Ch. 16 (Terrence Wiley) assesses the need for a national language policy that embraces societal multilingualism and offers the principles that it would be based on. The notes on each chapter are at the end of the book, followed by the references.

This volume provides an excellent point of departure for those interested in doing research on any of the language groups described here, with easy access to macrolinguistic indicators from the 2000 Census statistics, and it points to what the evolution of multilingualism in the US might look like in light of demographic trends. All in all, the book makes a clear statement that the US is and has been all but monolingual. But despite the clear signs of shift that all authors find in each of the cases they examine, they also point to signs of maintenance, offering a balance to this pessimistic picture and providing researchers with ideas for further exploration.