429 Reviews enthusiastically participated in the construction of the first transcontinental railroad, hoping that a demonstration of their patriotism would result in national acceptance. The Latter-Day Saints Church envisioned a huge amount of economic benefits for Mormon communities in the new American empire. Mormons cleverly engaged in the debate over progress for their own causes. Unlike Irish and Mormons, whose collective efforts helped to ease some of their pains, Chinese workers, because of their skin color, were never able to find any kind of national belonging as citizens. The Chinese did convince Americans, however, that they were an indispensable force for progress. The priority of their struggle was an economic improvement. Despite navigating such huge geographical and cultural boundaries, The Filth of Progress is able to present a coherent history, which hardly veers off the main tracks of its arguments. American progress was built on the backs of those “non-Americans,” who were denied most basic rights and privileges by the nation that believed in an idea of equality. In addition to an original thesis and superb research, the polished prose greatly enhances the quality of this work, allowing it to become an instant classic. Liping Zhu Eastern Washington University AMERICAN HISTORY UNBOUND: ASIANS AND PACIFIC ISLANDERS by Gary Y. Okihiro University of California Press, Oakland, 2015. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. 512 pages. $39.95 paper. Most American readers know about European immigrants and Ellis Island, but aside from some on the West Coast, few have ever heard of Angel Island, where officials oversaw much of the immigration from Asia into the United States. This hefty textbook aims to correct that lack of knowledge. It traces the history of immigration to the United States by persons from Pacific Island communities of Guam, Samoa, Hawai’i, and the Philippines, as well as from China, Japan, and India. From the stories of these newcomers , many American readers will encounter such groups as Chamorros and Tagalog speakers for the first time. While introducing them, Gary Okihiro sets his analysis within a broad chronological framework that extends back in time to include early Polynesian migrations across the south Pacific and stretches to the near present. He ties the experiences of islanders and Asians to those of American Indians and African Americans, seeing all of those groups as victims of the white American majority. His analysis of how American society treated Asian immigrants might have been strengthened had he nodded in the direction of the so-called New Immigration flooding into the country between the 1870s and World War I. During that era, millions of Italians, Slavs, Jews, and others from southern and eastern Europe arrived in the United States. When added to the large existing Irish communities already here, the New Immigrants came to be considered as something less than “white” in the minds of many, and they often experienced the same kinds of exploitation and segregation as Asians. The author contends that much of the anti-Asian prejudice resulted from skin color, but, although often darker complexioned than western Europeans , the New Immigrants did not have black, brown, or yellow skin. Rather they spoke the wrong languages, worshiped God incorrectly, and arrived from the wrong countries during a time of vast social and economic changes. Okihiro anchors his analysis on the world systems theory that divides the world into two zones — cores and peripheries. Economically developed areas called cores are wellestablished nation states, and peripheries are regions of the world that produced the raw materials and excess labor needed by the cores. Until the late nineteenth century, the United Sates and western European nations dominated the international economy through slavery, indentured servitude, and immigration-directed population movements. The book’s narrative focuses on how the core nations attracted immigrants, the migrants’ motivations for traveling to new lands, their experiences as low-paid and over-worked laborers, and the regulations that encouraged, restricted, or controlled immigration. It includes 431 Reviews a rich variety of experiences, nearly all of them showing clearly how capitalists profited from inhuman treatment of the laborers. American History Unbound is a textbook for college and university courses in American immigration and ethnic history. Its prose is clear and readable...