I’m grateful to the wonderful people who read and offered comments on the manuscript for this book at various stages of its progress: Gene Bell-Villada, David Caplan, Diane Chomsky, Rick Dionne, Ana Echevarría-Morales, Guillermo Fernández-Ampié, Julie Greene, Knut Langsetmo, Katrina Sealey, Steve Striffler, Amanda Warnock, and the students in HIS 725, Latinos in the United States, in the fall of 2006.
Many thanks to Shuya Ohno at MIRA (Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition) for connecting me to Gayatri Patnaik, who really deserves much of the credit for this book coming into existence at all; she and her colleagues at Beacon Press have all been a pleasure to work with.