In this timely collection of essays Jessie L. Embry and Brian Q. Cannon, history professors at Brigham Young University, prove how “the transnational turn” has powerfully regenerated interest in the history of the American West, almost three decades after “New Western History” and its detractors had allegedly exhausted the debate. The editors employ a transnational framework to address two paramount questions which, inexplicably, often fail to attract the scholarly attention they deserve: what impact did the lives of immigrants have on the social geography of western communities and how did the local context, the relations with Natives and earlier incomers, condition their individual identities? Particularly laudable is also the choice to include in this work a broad and eclectic selection of subjects. The experiences of religious groups, ethnic minorities and underrepresented nationalities find ample space in this survey, providing a well-rounded picture of the complex interplay between power, race and gender relations in the American West, between the nineteenth and the twenty-first centuries.

The seven essays included in the first part of the book deal with different definitions of “immigrant identity and Americans' expectations” (44). Brett Garcia Myhren begins with a study of the narratives of immigrants in pre-1841 California. While arguing that early immigrants “exhibited a malleable and ad hoc allegiance to their former homes as well as California” (67), Myhren challenges previous linear and stereotyped scholarly assumptions on the narrative of assimilation in Mexican California. Ryan Deringer's essay carries the discussion on identity forward by considering the formation of a Mormon–American masculine self in relation to other immigrant groups, namely Irish and Chinese, during the construction of the transcontinental railroad. Deringer illuminates how Mormon workers depicted “themselves as hardy, civilized and worthy specimens of a triumphant nation” (110) in opposition to “their immigrant and native-born counterparts on the railroad [who] had a weakened ideal manliness” (109). The centrality of Japanese immigration in the West is highlighted in Katherine Benton-Cohen's contribution, which assesses their experiences within the framework of the Dillingham Commission and the Federal immigration policy. The impact of locale on integration and racial policies was equally crucial in Montana's copper towns. According to Matthew Basso, the ties provided by Catholicism allowed the Italian and Croatian communities in Black Eagle to positively bond, while Butte's predominantly Irish population instead emphasized the so-called, as Matthew Frye Jacobson put it, “whiteness of a different color” of their southern European townsmen in order to maintain the status quo. The other three essays in this section – by Horton, Martinez and Wallis – delve into different facets of the relationship between the US and its Mexican borders. Spanning issues from cultural segregation and hybridity in Mexican American novels, to education and evangelization on the borderlands, these studies demonstrate how the fertility of border studies can help to reframe the debate on American regionalism.

The second part of the book focusses on paths of assimilation. In their introductory essay, Embry and Cannon emphasize how the “social capital” (255) created by early immigrants became a vital asset for the prosperity of ensuing communities. Such was the case with Jewish immigrants in nineteenth-century Los Angeles. Karen S. Wilson argues that, despite its numeric exiguity, the Jewish Angeleno community thrived thanks to the intense associational activities of its members. Cooperation and sociality – key qualities in every context of life – were all the more important in the “Wild” West. With the aid of archaeological finds, Michelle A. Charest reveals how saloons – not exactly reservoirs of conviviality in the popular imagination – served as prime sites for the consolidation of community bonds among the Irish immigrants of the boom-and-bust town of Virginia City, Nevada. The two following essays, by Mindi Sitterud-McCluskey and Mark I. Choate, analysing respectively British Mormon immigrant experiences in the intermountain West and the impact of the frontier thesis on the Italian diaspora, reiterate the strongly transnational imprint of this collection. Choate's work, in particular, provides meticulous documentation on the sociopolitical background of late nineteenth-century Italy, which significantly enhances the understanding of the ambivalent relationship between Italian immigrants' homeland and the New World. Similarly, ambivalence was a feature of the short-lived – and considerably understudied – Boer settlement in the Mexican region of Chihuahua (1902–5), which Andrew Offenburger uncovers in his original and thoroughly researched scholarship. The last two essays converge in examining contemporary Hispanic communities in the West – even if through such distinct methodologies as demographic research (Shumway) and oral history (Embry and Slight) – underlining how Latino immigrants, despite being targets of fierce prejudice, are central to the renaissance of western industrial districts.

Informed by such sound and diverse research, Immigrants in the Far West is a fine contribution to the fields of Western regionalism and US immigration history, as well as an indispensable resource for scholars of transnational American studies.