"This rich volume can be recommended to both advanced scholars of American culture and beginners in this field. The former can find a multitude of quite recent applications of approaches they are already familiar with; the latter may wonder at the dizzying varieties of American experience, as well as look with disbelief at the multitude." Anthropologie "Lee Baker has pulled together and provided an extremely useful conceptual frame for some of the best social analysis on current trends in the cultural practices of identity and identification in US society. This collection is a ‘must read’ for anyone interested in demystifying identity politics and understanding the complexities, pluralities, and common ground of cultural citizenship in the USA as it is changing in the new millennium." Faye V. Harrison, University of Tennessee "American higher education’s longstanding myths about cultural assimilation and equal access for all have given way to a new scholarly literature, which rigorously critiques the structures of identity, inequality, and power. In this timely and provocative reader, brilliant anthropologist Lee Baker has selected an outstanding collection of essays about the complex politics of cultural diversity. Life in America provides an insightful exploration into the major contemporary debates and issues that define studies of race, gender, sexuality, and class in American society." Manning Marable, Columbia University "Life in America is a user’s guide to everyday life and all its contradictory complexity, an indispensable inventory of practices and patterns in US society that produce both creative connections and corrosive conflicts, stimulating similarities and disturbing differences." George Lipsitz, University of California, San Diego