Race, Nation, and Empire in American History. Ed. by James T. Campbell, Matthew Pratt Guterl, and Robert G. Lee. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. viii, 383 pp. Cloth, $65.00, ISBN 978-0-8078-3127-4. Paper, $22.50, ISBN 978-0-8078-5828-8.)

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Some collections of essays are kept close by because they contain discrete essays on topics of interest. They are easy to find and grab. Others, like this book, contain essays that, gathered together, offer something new, important, and exciting. It is rare that a collection should be read cover to cover; this one should. Race, Nation, and Empire in American History is part of a recent spate of books that express the now-dated desire for the internationalization of American history through deliberate engagement with ideas of race and empire, rather than through a more vague sense of transnational context. This collection emerged from a 2003 Brown University conference on “Race, Globalization, and the New Ethnic Studies.” The book recalls the conference format with parts standing in for panels (with the same broad conceptual focus) and short papers. The papers introduce a range of individual projects, some of which have been or are near publication. The spectrum of topics—from Franz Boas in the first section to Samuel Huntington in the last, with the annexation of Hawaii and California farming in between—might at quick glance suggest disorder.