American Intolerance

Robert E. Bartholomew is the author of fourteen previous books, most recently A Colorful History of Popular Delusions (with Peter Hassall) and American Hauntings (with Joe Nickell). He has also published more than sixty articles in professional journals, including the British Medical Journal and the International Journal of Social Psychiatry. Bartholomew has been interviewed in the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and on the History and Discovery channels. He is featured in an eight-part National Geographic series on UFOs. Bartholomew holds a PhD in medical sociology. He is a history instructor at Botany College, in Auckland, New Zealand.Anja Reumsch ssel is a freelance science journalist living in Hamburg, Germany. Her articles have been published in various German science and general-interest magazines, including GEO Wissen, STERN, and Die Zeit. She recently published her book, Extremismus, about political and religious extremism in Germany.

""Bartholomew and Reumschüssel capture America’s complicated and, more often than we would like to admit, dark relationship with immigration. Their dissection of our nation’s history of religious, ethnic, and racial fears is sobering. The times we live in make American Intolerance even more important for all of us to read.”—Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum and author of There Goes the Neighborhood: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration“In this very important book, Bartholomew and Reumschüssel show us that Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim campaigns are part of the long history of `foreigner panics’—from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to the anti-German hysteria of World War I, to the `repatriation’ of a million people to Mexico in the 1930s. It brings to light Americans’ competing urges to open or close the door to immigrants. But ultimately American Intolerance reminds us that, while predictable, these xenophobic spasms are the exception rather than the rule and are often followed by a recollection that, as a nation of immigrants, new Americans have always been our greatest strength.”—Frank Bures, author of The Geography of Madness“With a gripping and readable style, American Intolerance pulls no punches in revealing the harrowing of immigrants as a national pastime.”—Dan Vergano, senior reporter, BuzzFeed News“Timely reading for anyone concerned about recent changes in immigration policy and ramped-up white supremacy rhetoric and violence.”—Foreword Reviews“We Americans will never be able to resolve the problems of our present until we are able to honestly confront the horrors of our past. This includes the sordid history of our attitudes toward immigrants, especially when race is a factor. I know of no better introduction to this important topic than Bartholomew and Reumschu¨ssel’s American Intolerance. Clear, accessible, and compulsively readable, it is an important read, especially at our present historical moment.”—David Livingstone Smith, PhD, author of Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others“