For the past four years, I have been harboring a deep and wonderful secret.

My wife @jialynnyang has been at work on a book, and not just any book. A book about political struggle and moral conflict that changed the way I think about America and its place in the world. It's a book about what this country has been and what it might be.

Its focus is on immigration policy. But as she demonstrates, there is so much more to immigration than walls and borders. It's a book about the way international crisis shapes American identity.

The flashpoint is the political battle over the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. But it's also about World War II, the Holocaust and the Cold War. And the Ku Klux Klan. And eugenics. And Teddy Roosevelt and Henry Ford. The scope is breathtaking.

The research that went into @jialynnyang's project was gargantuan. When we lived in DC, she spent her evenings and weekends in the Library of Congress combing through books and the papers of Congressmen I'd never heard of.

I know because I was working on a book of my own, and this was how we did date nights. There is no thrill like spending a few hours side-by-side with the love of your life researching American history in the Library of Congress.

Our vacations became research excursions -- to the Truman Library in Independence, Mo., the JFK Library in Boston, the Nevada State Historical Society in Reno. Eventually we moved to New York, and @jialynnyang would hole up in the Brooklyn Library going through papers + records.

I read through her drafts, and was fascinated by the way she wove new ideas into the manuscript as she uncovered new material in her research. The way she honed her narrative. The pacing of the story as the action moved from from California to New York to Washington to Hawaii.

Oh, and along the way she carried and delivered a beautiful, wonderful child.

And so for four years I have known that @jialynnyang has done something extraordinary. And today @wwnorton is releasing it to the world. I could not be more proud of what she has accomplished, or more excited for the people who are about to discover it.

I recognize that I am not an objective observer here, so if you don't want to take my word for it, this review from @BostonGlobe is a good example of the way the book is being received. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/05/14/arts/battles-over-borders-one-mighty-irresistible-tide/

So today is a big day in our household, and I hope you'll share it with us.
https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393635843