RaveThe Washington PostEven, quiet prose ... More than a story of an immigrant group accepting a wretched fate. Luo wisely puts the human experience at the center of his narrative, ensuring that Strangers in the Land never devolves into mere 19th-century political history. In the process, he restores a voice to the forgotten men and women who endured endless broadsides in their adoption of a new country. Throughout, Luo describes people who pressed, doggedly and fearlessly, for the United States to make good on its founding principles. It’s these people who animate the book, filling the pages with stories of endurance and hard-fought victories but also searing accounts of sorrow, violence and injustice ... At once an indictment of how our nation failed that test before and a reminder of how some pushed back, Strangers in the Land deserves a place on the shelf beside other essential works of American history.
Andrew Pettegree
RaveThe Washington PostSprawling ... In cogent and steady prose, Pettegree recounts an array of historical moments ... Pettegree clearly possesses an exceptional breadth of knowledge, in addition to a skill for nuanced narrative and convincing arguments ... Often fascinating ... Pettegree’s fondness for detail is at times indulgent ... Evocative.
