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Coming to America

Here's a group of enterprising Americans and their accomplishments for you: Alexander Graham Bell connected us to the world via the telephone, and Jerry Yang upped that connectivity with Yahoo.com. Werhner von Braun blasted our rockets into space, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger blasted away on the big screen. Carl Djerassi rocked our society with The Pill, and Gene Simmons just plain rocks.

What do these Americans have in common, beyond their contributions to us? They were not born Americans. They are all immigrants. So were Bob Hope, Admiral Hyman Rickover, and Cary Grant. So are Sidney Poitier, Elizabeth Taylor, Gloria Estefan, Dr. Ruth, and Patrick Ewing. They are just a handful of the more than 60,000,000 people who have immigrated to the United States since its founding. Try one of these books to learn about the immigrant story.

A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain: Stories

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By Richard Olen Butler

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A compelling chorus of voices that together depict the experiences of the many Vietnamese expatriates living in America.

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Roots

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By Alex Haley

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"The monumental bestseller! Alex Haley recaptures his family's history in this drama of eighteenth-century slave Kunta Kinte and his descendants." The family story continues with Haley's Queen.

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House of Sand and Fog

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By Andre Dubus III

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An émigré Iranian colonel has spent most of his savings trying to enhance his daughter's chances of a good marriage. Once she is married, he spends the remaining funds on a house at an auction, unwittingly putting himself and his family in the middle of a legal tussle with the house's former owner. What begins as a legal struggle turns into a personal confrontation, with tragic results. 

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