A Different Mirror - by Ronald Takaki (Paperback)

About the Book

"Originally published in hardcover by Little, Brown, and Company, June 1993."

Book Synopsis

A dramatic retelling of our nation's past by today's preeminent multiculturalism scholar, Ronald Takaki, this book examines America's history in "a different mirror"--from the perspective of the minority peoples themselves.

A "brilliant revisionist history of America." --Publishers Weekly

Ronald Takaki's A Different Mirror is a landmark work that retells American history from the bottom up, through the lives of many minorities--Native Americans, African Americans, Jewish Americans, Irish Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, and others--who helped create this country's mighty economy and rich mosaic culture.

Review Quotes

"A Different Mirror advances a truly humane sense of American possibility." --Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

"A groundbreaker...It's fascinating to watch Takaki weave these multifaceted strands into a single narrative text." --San Francisco Chronicle

"A splendid achievement, a bold and refreshing new approach to our national history. The research is meticulous, the writing powerful and eloquent, with what can only be called an epic sweep across time and cultures." --Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

"An excellent place to start in understanding how this uniquely diverse country came to be and where it is headed."--Christian Science Monitory

"One closes the book with a deepened sense of the centrality of ethnicity in the American past." --Washington Post

"Takaki's book is nothing less than an attempt to view all of American history from a multicultural perspective. It is a laudable effort -- humane, well-informed, accessible, and often inclusive. It is clearly not intended to divide Americans but rather to teach them to value the nation's inescapable diversity." --New York Times Book Review

"While Takaki's subtitle is 'a history of multicultural America, ' his book is also a manifesto for the future."--New York Review of Books

About the Author

Ronald Takaki (1939-2009) established the Ethnic Studies Ph.D. program at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught for thirty years. He was the author of six books, including Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans and Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II.