One Mighty and Irresistible Tide - by Jia Lynn Yang (Paperback)

The One Mighty and Irresistible Tide is a powerful and cogent account of the twentieth-century battle for immigration reform that set the stage for today's roiling debates.

This book recounts how lawmakers, activists, and presidents from Truman through LBJ worked relentlessly to abolish the 1924 law, which instituted stringent ethnic quotas that choked off large-scale immigration for decades.

Through a world war, a refugee crisis after the Holocaust, and a McCarthyist fever, a coalition of lawmakers and activists descended from Jewish, Irish, and Japanese immigrants fought to establish a new principle of equality in the American immigration system.

Their crowning achievement, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, proved to be one of the most transformative laws in the country's history, opening the door to nonwhite migration at levels never seen before--and changing America in ways that those who debated it could hardly have imagined.

This book is a deeply researched and illuminating work of historical nonfiction that will captivate readers interested in American politics, immigration policy, and social justice.