Chronology of Immigration is an annotated chronological representation of events that influenced immigration in the United States from the seventeenth to the twenty‐first century. This quick ready reference tool is useful for researchers who want a general overview of immigration events, laws, and statistics. Wright is the author of over 19 books and the author of a series called Chronology of … . This text is a departure from how publishers traditionally organize reference works to convey a general review of such a complex issue.
The chronology is well organized and the annotations for each year range from short paragraphs to essay length explanations. Researchers will make use of the appendices included in this text, specifically Appendix 1: Immigration by decade, Appendix 2: Immigration by period and source, Appendix 3: Key legislation affecting immigration. When browsing the bibliography readers will conclude that this book was written by a good writer not an expert. There is no indication of the author's expertise in this area but you get a sense based on the essay type introduction that he has researched the topic enough to summarize major events and laws.
This text should not be purchased in place of Encyclopedia of American Immigration (Ciment, 2001), Encyclopedia of North American Immigration (Powell, 2005) (RR 2005/401), Immigration in America Today: An Encyclopedia (Loucky et al., 2006) and Encyclopedia of Immigration and Migration in the American West (Bakken and Kindell, 2006). For libraries who already own the encyclopedias mentioned, purchasing this text will not offer any new information.
