It is generally agreed that source-based analysis is fundamental to the successful teaching and learning of history. It is less widely recognized, however, that those at the chalk face require the assistance of books such as this if they are to deploy, selectively and effectively, the daunting abundance of primary documentation available to support their courses. James Pula's textbook offers instructors and students alike, particularly those at senior high school level, a navigable and well-balanced route through a diverse collection of documents relating to 165 years of immigration to the United States.

The structure of United States Immigration, 1800–1965: A History in Documents is one of its two main attributes. Pula begins with a succinct thirty-page introduction to key themes in American immigration history. This chronological overview addresses not only the motives of successive generations of immigrants from different parts of the world, but also their experiences in transit and after arrival, with particular emphasis on the political and socioeconomic factors that determined whether they were welcomed or shunned. These themes are then explored through seventy-five documents of varying length that comprise the book's central core and constitute its second main attribute. Twenty initial extracts about the immigrant experience, written by observers, journalists, and immigrants themselves, are followed by scrutiny of pro- and anti-immigrant literature, and succeeded in turn by excerpts from a variety of government papers: reports, legislation, and court cases. Each document is contextualized by a helpful (if occasionally repetitive) editorial introduction, and the intermittent use of cartoons and photographs enhances the largely textual narrative.

Coverage of the immigrant experience includes three references to early nineteenth-century Irish immigration: a trial report following intra-immigrant rioting among the Philadelphia Irish in 1831, a plea for the toleration of Irish Catholics in Boston in 1834; and a newspaper editorial urging the Irish to support the election of their countrymen in New York City. In this section we also hear from the testimony of immigrants who reflect, respectively, on the loneliness of separation from a Swedish homeland; Chinese experiences in California and New York; a French Canadian's employment in New England's textile industry; the trauma of displaced European Jews; the defrauding of Italian laborers by unscrupulous padrone; and the development of associational culture and political activism among Poles and Italians. The inspection of new arrivals at Ellis Island is portrayed through the eyes of a missionary observer, and the final two documents are pictorial representations of postwar anticommunism among central European immigrants and the expectation that Chinese children in 1960s New York would assimilate into American culture and society.

Eighteen pro-immigration documents focus initially on criticism of nativism and the Know Nothing movement and endorse immigrants’ right to vote in the face of racial and religious discrimination. Anti-Catholic and anti-Chinese rhetoric is countered in essays, editorials, and cartoons; the proposed literacy test is vehemently opposed; and there is a particularly evocative photograph of a slum dwelling in New York's Lower East Side. Antithetical arguments are presented in thirteen extracts. These highlight fears that Irish and German Catholics would subvert the American democratic process; unskilled and unassimilable laborers from southern, central, and eastern Europe would lower wages and increase crime rates; and Bolsheviks and anarchists would usher in radicalism and violence. An excerpt from the eugenicist Madison Grant's inflammatory 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race—later described by Hitler as “my Bible”—reflects the febrile atmosphere of the early twentieth century after the Dillingham Commission published its reports. Grant's assertion of the superiority of the “Nordic race” was coupled with a demand that other groups should be excluded from America and those already there should be confined to ghettoes.

Government documents that comprise the book's final section are divided into reports (six), legislation (fourteen) and court cases (four). The first report, from Thomas Jefferson's 1801 Message to Congress, offers a more liberal view of immigration policy than that of his predecessor, and it is followed, in the “legislation” section, by an extract from the Naturalization Act of the same year. All the reports either highlight the perils faced by immigrants at sea and after arrival or argue for less restrictive entry requirements, whereas most of the legislative documents portray the increasingly exclusive attitudes and policies of lawmakers. Two of the court cases highlighted were provoked by the Chinese Exclusion Act. In 1879, the plaintiff argued successfully that his human rights had been violated when a San Francisco sheriff had shaved his head, and in 1898 American-born Wong Kim Ark won his citizenship case after being denied reentry to the United States following a visit to China. In the other cases, however, from 1922 and 1923, citizenship was denied to a Japanese and Indian immigrant respectively.

Throughout the book Pula is at pains to explain, in marginal notes, the meaning of terms in the text that he presumably anticipates might be obscure to readers. Some of these annotations are helpful, particularly when identifying unfamiliar individuals and locations, or defining movements, policies and institutions. Other entries are bizarre, an apparently random selection of common nouns, verbs, and adjectives that should pose no problem to a high school readership. Some of the annotations are then repeated, unnecessarily, in a short glossary of terms at the end of the book.

Compiling a collection such as this involves the initial challenge of selecting a representative sample from an ocean of sources and the subsequent need to assign the selected documents to their appropriate thematic sections. Perhaps it is inevitable that there will be ambiguities and overlaps in the placing of material, and a handful of the documents, particularly those relating to the immigrant experience, might have been more logically located in the next section. But these are minor presentational quibbles. Overall, Pula's systematic approach and eclectic selection of documents provide both comprehensible and comprehensive access to a vast, vital, and multifaceted subject. This publication should be on the bookshelf of every teacher and student who wishes to understand the evolution, nuances, and tortuous history of 165 years of American immigration.