About this Book

"There is no such thing as one homo Americanus. There is no single culture here." So begins this extraordinary volume on ethnicity in America by Michael Novak. The point of this book, which was originally published as The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics, is to raise consciousness about a crucial part of the American experience. Its aim is to involve each reader in self-inquiry. Who, after all, are you? What history brought you to where you are? Why are you different from others? And have you noticed the ways in which you are distinct? The new text now contains a fourth part, "Ethnicity in the Seventies and Beyond," comprising six new chapters: "The New Ethnicity"; "Pluralism: A Humanistic Perspective"; "Ethnicity and Cultural Diversity"; "How American are You if Your Grandparents Came from Slovakia in 1888?"; "One Species, Many Cultures"; and "The Social World of Individuals." The author has also written a comprehensive new introduction, discussing the changes that have occurred since the book was first written, detailing how ethnicity has become a prominent issue in politics, and adamantly denouncing the current trend known as "multiculturalism," which, Novak notes, has been improperly associated with ethnicity. When the book first appeared, Time said that "Novak has attacked the American Dream in order to open up a possible second chapter for it." Newsweek called it "a tough minded provocative book which could well signal an important change in American politics." Unmeltable Ethnics is of significant interest to sociologists, political theorists, and scholars and students interested in ethnicity, and how it has become part of the mid-1990s debate on American society and its future.