In Ethnic Pride, American Patriotism, June Alexander presents a history of inter-war America from the perspective of new Slovak and Eastern European immigrant communities. Like the groups that preceded them, Slovak immigrants came to define being American as adhering to its political principles; they saw no contradiction between being patriotic Americans and maintaining pride in their ancestry. To counter the negative effects of the 1924 immigration law, Slovaks mobilized a variety of political and cultural activities to insure group survival and promote ethnic pride. In numerous localities "Slovak days" brought first and second generation immigrants together to celebrate their dual identity. June Granatir Alexander's study adds complexity and nuance to entrenched notions of conflicts between tradition-bound immigrants and their American-born children. Showing that ethnicity mattered to both generations, Alexander challenges generalizations derived from "whiteness" studies.

June Granatir Alexander is on the faculty of the Russian and East European Studies Program at the University of Cincinnati. She is also the author of The Immigrant Church and Community: Pittsburgh's Slovak Catholics and Lutherans, 1880-1915.

"Alexander's analysis and evidence is impressive. Ethnic Pride, American Patriotism explores Slovaks in the United States over three decades in a way that makes connections to other groups and to a range of issues in immigration and ethnic history. This book will speak to a wide readership, and it makes a good case that there need not be a fundamental contradiction between the 'ethnic impulse' and the Americanizing one."—Thomas Dublin, Department of History, State University of New York at Binghamton, and author of Immigrant Voices: New Lives in America, 1773-1986

"Ethnic Pride, American Patriotism is a revealing and unique look into the dynamics of an American ethnic community during the first half of the twentieth century. Alexander focuses tightly on the Slovak-American community and its constantly changing political goals and social activities. In doing so, she is able to explain how this particular group creatively sought to construct an identity for itself in the United States and adjust to American life. The portrait here of a second generation not alienated from the first is vivid and fresh."—John Bodnar, Chancellor's Professor and Chair History, Indiana University

"This thorough study of the Slovak groups can serve as a blueprint for other ethnic groups."—The Polish American Journal, February 2005