“Ellinghaus’s study offers insights on racism and prejudice within the United States and Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and how public policy and private lives were affected by these phenomena. . .. This book is valuable for its illuminating transnational analysis and for the opportunity it provides for Australians and Americans to reflect on their own histories of treatment of their indigenous population.”—Christine Choo, American Historical Review “This book makes a major contribution to scholars’ understanding of the interrelationship between assimilation policies and interracial marriages. . . . The brilliance of this book lies in the way it underscores what is distinctive about each national context without diminishing what is similar. . . . What makes this book so extraordinary is Ellinghaus’ ability to move back and forth between these different levels of analysis and between the two nations: showing us how larger discourses about assimilation, racial difference and ‘miscegenation’ affected people’s understandings of their marriages (and vice versa). In short, this is a beautifully crafted book, full of nuance and complexity—comparative history at its best.”—Australian Historical Studies "Taking Assimilation to Heart demonstrates the efficacy of the new, wide-lensed thinking being applied to studies of colonialism and imperialism. With its comparative settler-colonising framing, this book helps illuminate gendered histories operating on both the intimate and national level, and with ripples both local and global."—Ann McGrath, Aboriginal History