All the Nations Under Heaven ― Immigrants, Migrants, and the Making of New York

First published in 1996, All the Nations Under Heaven has earned praise and a wide readership for its unparalleled chronicle of the role of immigrants and migrants in shaping the history and culture of New York City. This updated edition of a classic text brings the story of the immigrant experience in New York City up to the present with vital new material on the city’s revival as a global metropolis with deeply rooted racial and economic inequalities.

All the Nations Under Heaven explores New York City’s history through the stories of people who moved there from countless places of origin and indelibly marked its hybrid popular culture, its contentious ethnic politics, and its relentlessly dynamic economy. From Dutch settlement to the extraordinary diversity of today’s immigrants, the book chronicles successive waves of Irish, German, Jewish, and Italian immigrants and African American and Puerto Rican migrants, showing how immigration changes immigrants and immigrants change the city. In a compelling narrative synthesis, All the Nations Under Heaven considers the ongoing tensions between inclusion and exclusion, the pursuit of justice and the reality of inequality, and the evolving significance of race and ethnicity. In an era when immigration, inequality, and globalization are bitterly debated, this revised edition is a timely portrait of New York City through the lenses of migration and immigration.

Frederick Binder (1931–2016) was professor of history at the City University of New York. His works include The Way We Lived: Essays and Documents in American Social History (1988).

David M. Reimers is professor emeritus of history at New York University. His Columbia University Press books include Unwelcome Strangers: American Identity and the Turn Against Immigration (1999) and Ethnic Americans: A History of Immigration (fifth edition, 2009).

Robert W. Snyder is professor of journalism and American studies at Rutgers University-Newark. His books include Transit Talk: New York’s Bus and Subway Workers Tell Their Stories (1998) and Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York City (2014).