This extraordinary work of oral history captures the immense drama and full dimensions of the American immigrant experience. The men and women who tell their stories include such famous names as Alistair Cooke, W. Michael Blumenthal, Edward Teller, and Lynn Redgrave. But they share these pages with 136 other people whose stories are equally compelling: a Jewish former sweatshop worker and union organizer, a Scandanavian homesteader, a Polish coal miner, an anti-Nazi refugee, a Japanese war bride, a Mexican migrant worker, a Cuban exile, a South African interracial couple, a Soviet dissident, and many more. They reveal the mingled joy and pain, hardship and triumph that were and are part of the glowing dream and fearful gamble of a new life in a new land. They offer unique understanding not only of the makeup but of the meaning of America.

This is the story of ten years in the life of America - and of fifty-nine men and women who lived through those years. In their own words they describe a decade that shook us all: the struggle for civil rights, the assassinations, war abroad and at home, a youth-led revolution in music, dress, and values. Some of them recall also the exhilaration of believing that by their actions they could change the course of history. How did it feel to go into the South on a 'Freedom Bus', to be tear-gassed by your own country's soldiers, to take LSD for the first time, to step off a helicopter into a Vietnamese jungle, to take over your college's administration building, to receive a telegram telling you your son had been killed? Morrison's compelling book sheds light on these issues and many others.