This extensive and thorough reference work reflects more than three decades of the author's career spent investigating US Spanish. Lipski begins with a brief introduction in which he outlines the trajectory of his own academic life, providing insight into the growth of interest that Spanish within the US has experienced over time.

The first three chapters of this work as well as the thirteenth chapter address the entire field of Spanish in the US. To start, Ch. 1 examines both the past and present importance of Spanish in the US, noting the increasing population of Spanish speakers living in the US, the popularity of Spanish as the most frequently taught language in the US and the growing body of research carried out on varieties of US Spanish. Despite the steady increase in the number of US Spanish speakers, Lipski also takes note of the impact of English on the Spanish-speaking population, as widespread language shift to English often takes hold after only two generations. Ch. 2 presents a detailed overview of the large and growing body of scholarship that has been carried out on Spanish in the US over the past century. While tracing the history of various research milestones, Lipski draws connections between these and the social and political trends that have shaped America over the past one hundred years. Both Ch. 3 and Ch. 13 present concepts related to Spanish-English language contact. In Ch. 3 Lipski examines various contact-induced linguistic phenomena that have been described as Spanglish as well as the main research questions in regard to Spanglish. Examples of contact-induced linguistic phenomena discussed in Ch. 3 include integrating Anglicisms into Spanish, the use of syntactic calques and loan translations, grammatical deviations from standard Spanish, derogatory use of pseudo-Spanish, and code switching. Code switching also features prominently in Ch. 13, along with language mixing.

Chs. 4 through 12 describe the major varieties of Spanish found in the US today. Each of these chapters includes some historical background, detailing important events leading to the presence of the various Spanish-speaking groups in the US and up-to-date demographic information pertaining to each group. In addition, each of these chapters provides descriptive linguistic material about the Spanish varieties, including aspects of phonetics, morphology, syntax, lexicon, and sociolinguistic characteristics. The particular varieties featured include Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Central American, Salvadoran, Nicaraguan, Guatemalan, Honduran, and the traditional varieties of Spanish spoken in New Mexico and Louisiana. The traditional varieties of New Mexico and Louisiana are unique in that they are the only varieties described that have not resulted from either immigration or from the expansion of the US territory over the past century and a half. As these New Mexico and Louisiana varieties are older dialects of Spanish, they provide a vista into the Spanish of the past. With its wealth of detail, Lipski's work serves Spanish in the US scholars very well.