From Publishers Weekly
Challenging a classical economic theory that the development of a city is governed by commercial and geographic imperatives, sociology professors Portes (Johns Hopkins) and Stepick (Florida International) show that Miami is the creation of "chance and individual wills." Having nothing in particular to offer except sun and sea, Miami seemed destined to be a tourist and retirement haven until Carribean politics turned it into a dynamic international city and what the authors call the "nation's first full-fledged experiment in bicultural living in the contemporary era." They present an unusually rich history of the city from Ponce de Leon to the present, but the focus is squarely on the migrations of Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in the 1970s and 1980s, and on the effects of their ascendancy on the established population of Anglos, Native Americans and African Americans. Much of the authors' highly readable material is drawn from studies funded by the Ford Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
New York Times Book Review
The authors reveal how the Cuban success story has transformed the character of Miami while delineating more sharply the identity of other ethnic communities.
