This book will enhance Christian Joppke's growing reputa-tion as one of the most thoughtful commentators on thepolitics of international migration and citizenship. Immigra-tion and the Nation-State is an impressive cross-nationalcomparison that builds on elite interviews and reanalysis ofprimary materials, but its chief value is in its bold synthesisand critique of a rapidly growing and highly disjointedsecondary literature. Although it assesses a variety of theo-retical concepts, the book is primarily a historically rooted,richly empirical work of analysis and interpretation. Joppkedeals expertly with three liberal states with different nation-hood traditions and immigration histories. The United King-dom is distinctive in that it was at once a nation-state and anempire. The United States is the only case of the three inwhich governments deliberately sought to foster immigrationfor settlement. Germany was a divided nation whose com-mitment to reunification, embedded in the Basic Law, posedparticularly troublesome issues for immigration and citizen-ship policy.