Ronald Takaki

In an extraordinary blend of narrative history, personal recollection, & oral testimony, the author presents a sweeping history of Asian Americans. He writes of the Chinese who laid tracks for the transcontinental railroad, of plantation laborers in the cane fields of Hawaii, of "picture brides" marrying strangers in the hope of becoming part of the American dream. He tells stories of Japanese Americans behind the barbed wire of U.S. internment camps...

Ronald Takaki, a third-generation American of Japanese ancestry and professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley for over two decades, reflects on the past and the future of America's expanding ethnic diversity and how this diversity will affect the way we relate as individuals and as a nation to the rest of the world.

In Double Victory, a broad spectrum of American voices emerges to illustrate the country's multicultural struggles and victories during World War II. We hear from a Japanese-American at an internment camp; a Native American code breaker using the Navajo language for the first time; a Mexican-American woman, "Rosarita, the riveter," who was able to work a job during wartime other than as a housecleaner or a maid. Takaki also considers the racial biases...