This volume is a compilation of recent sociolinguistic research on the Spanish of the Southwestern United States. The communities under study are those with ties to Mexico, whose immigrants or descendants live in the Southwest. Those states in which at least 10% of the population is Spanish speaking “are found in the vast region west of the Mississippi stretching from the Pacific Northwest to the Gulf of Mexico, from the northern to southern borders of this nation, an area consisting of more than 1.1 million square miles” (12).

The twenty-three chapters are organized in five sections, each thematically cohesive although independent in framework, methods, and geographical focus. One of the chapters in each section is an introduction to the theme written by either an established or an emerging expert in each field. The themes are, briefly: historical aspects, loss and maintenance, linguistic description, attitudes and identity, and, finally, politics and pedagogy. Each section contains three or four chapters written by scholars whose research underscores their training in empirical, hands-on methods, whether quantitative, qualitative, or a combination.

A strength is that each chapter is based on research in a community of each author's choosing that she or he has explored in depth. The linguistic reality of Mexican Americans is not a homogeneous whole, but is rather heterogeneous and multi-faceted, reflecting the dynamics of the situated, geopolitical, and historical circumstances of each diaspora. Another strength is that the research included here reflects the state of the art, that is, current issues in sociolinguistics brought to bear on the situation of Mexican-heritage Spanish speakers in the Southwest. As one of the established scholars in Spanish sociolinguistics, John Lipski, aptly remarks in his own chapter: “The present volume embodies a cross-section of the linguistic issues intersecting with Southwest Spanish, a testimony to the seriousness with which scholars approach this endeavor, as well as to the sense of wonder evoked by a language at once so unified and so kaleidoscopic, the constant companion of many Americans” (178).

A weakness is that it includes no chapters on phonetics or phonology, nor is there a section devoted to code-switching, which many nonexperts equate with a contact variety of Spanish. Because of these omissions, the volume does not present the full spectrum of the linguistic phenomena of the Spanish of this group. For those who would use this as a textbook, these topics would need to be assigned as supplementary readings. By contrast, for the most part the chapters are mercifully free of the linguistic jargon that might make this book unsuitable for nonspecialists.

In sum, this volume is a welcome addition to the currently available books on the Spanish of Mexican Americans in the Southwest. It is accessible to the nonlinguist professional as well as to university students whose prior exposure to linguistics has been minimal. It is representative of the state of the art and a good point of departure for discussion of the themes presented therein.