Out of the Melting Pot, into the Fire

“Jens Kurt Heycke provides a much-needed, meticulously researched—and courageous—defense of the melting pot from classical antiquity to 21st-century America. His data and analyses show how and why the assimilationist model alone has always unified fractionalized ethnic and racial groups into a coherent national whole. Out of the Melting Pot, Into the Fire stands as a dire warning to beleaguered Western democracies that have foolishly rejected the melting pot that has so often proven the pathway to their survival and success.” —Victor Davis Hanson, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author of Mexifornia: A State of Becoming “The United States has been, from its colonial beginnings, a multiethnic society. It has had to choose between being a melting pot society—assimilating newcomers and, while appreciating different heritages, seeking a single national identity—and a multicultural society, with separate enclaves and official quotas and preferences for those deemed members of different groups. Americans are not the first nation to face such a choice and, in Out of the Melting Pot, Into the Fire, Jens Kurt Heycke shows how other societies have faced this choice—and why Americans should embrace the melting pot model in the future.” —Michael Barone, senior political analyst, Washington Examiner, and founding co-author, The Almanac of American Politics