Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (The Institution for Social and Policy St) 
asked by scoobie on November 5, 2006 2:02 AM
In this powerful and disturbing book, Rogers Smith traces political struggles over U.S. citizenship laws from the colonial period through the Progressive era and shows that throughout this time, most adults were legally denied access to full citizenship, including political rights, solely because of their race, ethnicity, or gender.
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Civic Ideals is a book every american should read.Prof.Smith has demonstrated clearly how trough history the United States have had diferents meanings about the citizenship.In the case of Puerto Rico-the last colony of the world-we the Puerto Ricans have a second-class citizenship.The author sumarize very well our case with the insular cases and Balzac vs. People of Puerto Rico.Also Smith analize the legal debate in the Harvard Law Review,but do not mention the Yale Law Journal(Adams,Elmer B.,"The Causes and Results of Our War with Spain from a legal Standpoint."VII(1899),pag.119 and Parker,Le Roy,"The Constitution of Porto Rico",X (1901),pag.136.)and Columbia Law Review;Fuller,Paul,"Some Constitutional Questions Suggested by Recent Acquisitions"I(1901),pag.108).For people who want to know the real constitutional history of The United States this book is excellent.Is one of my favorites books.
reviewed by titanium7 on November 7, 2006 7:09 PM
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This is one of the few books that I have started and then quit part way through. I had to force myself to continue reading after about page 50 and then quit at 200. It was very dry content and read too much like a doctoral dissertation. In addition, assumptions were made about the readers knowledge of court cases related to civic rights.
reviewed by jbritt on November 29, 2006 7:24 PM