"...combination of distinguished research scholarship and attractiveness to a wide market outside our discipline and outside academia." "Its ten chapters constitute an eloquent and informed 110,000-word essay combining expert generalizations about the urban geography of ethnic residential processes with detailed applications of those general principles to this region's particularly complex ethnic pattern. The writing and research are superb, placing this essay squarely in the distinguished tradition of enduring works on Los Angeles by McWilliams [Southern California Country], Fogelson [The Fragmented Metropolis], Banham [Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies], Davis [City of Quartz], and Scott and Soja [The City].

--From a review by Dennis Dingemans in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 88 (3), September 1998, pages 540-541.
 

"This is the first detailed portrait of the world's most ethnically diverse metropolis. Allen and Turner make brilliant use of neighborhood-level history to animate census data and illuminate fundamental trends. Above all, they shed new light on the underlying causes of recent racial turmoil in Southern California, including a widening income gap between affluent whites and blue-collar Latinos. The Ethnic Quilt should be required reading for anyone concerned about the future of a multicultural America."

--MIKE DAVIS,
author of City of Quartz

"A visually powerful and informative portrayal of Los Angeles. Scholars will find this to be an essential reference in trying to understand the dynamics of race and space in Los Angeles."

--LEO ESTRADA
 sociologist, UCLA
 
 

"The Ethnic Quilt does what is rarely done in Southern California" talk about issues of demographic change and race in a constructive, informed and rational manner. This book is an essential to anyone interested in understanding the dynamics of America's 21st Century ethnic frontier."

--JOEL KOTKIN,
author, Pepperdine Institute for Public Policy
 
 

"Here, at long last, is proof positive that Los Angeles represents an unprecedented experiment in ethnic integration and diversity. This authoritative study documents the internationalization of America's second largest city. Contained within the technical elegance of this demographic study are the prophetic patterns of the American future."

--KEVIN STARR
historian, State Librarian of California
 
 

"By their careful analysis of both spatial and social distribution, Professors Allen and Turner have presented a rich and rightfully complex portrait of Southern California. Their findings, rendered with impressive clarity, provide us with a timely view of the vital breadth and depth of the region. This book deserves to be on the shelf of anyone interested in the ethnic dynamics of the greater Los Angeles region."

--WILLIAM DEVERELL,
historian, California Institute of Technology
 
 

"A cartographic feast, this extraordinary urban atlas draws the reader into the ethnic worlds of Southern California like no other resource I know. Each one of the nearly 80 maps and their supportive text informatively invites you into the rich ethnic tapestry of the earth's most culturally diverse urban region. The Ethnic Quilt will be a standard reference work well into the next century."

--EDWARD SOJA,
geographer, UCLA