Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation Book

Legacies tackles a notoriously slippery and difficult subject, and it does so admirably. As a social researcher looking at social identity, Legacies was repeatedly recommend to me (always with high praise, and often accompanied by an and exclamation mark). I lost track of the number of times I heard, "Oh have you read Legacies yet? You really have to." I am familiar with the work of both Portes and Rumbolt, and they maintained their high standards throughout this text. Legacies is not always easy to read, mind you. It can be dry at times, as any book covering quantitative data tends to be. But the character profiles in the early chapters helps to soften the tendency significantly. While not wholly without criticism, the research methods are sound and the sample size significant. I too would recommend it to readers interested in the changing dynamic of the American population. It challenges some firmly held dogmas, and sadly highlights some of the social ills we all wish would be found to be untrue.