In this ambitious book, Rosemary Salomone uses the heated debate over how best to educate immigrant children as a way to explore what national identity and language rights mean in an age of globalization, transnationalism, and dual citizenship. She debunks popular myths - that bilingualism impedes academic success, that English is under threat, that immigrants are reluctant to learn English, or that the ancestors of today's assimilated Americans had all to gain and nothing to lose in abandoning their family language. She lucidly reveals the little-known history of bilingual education, its dizzying array of meanings in different schools, districts, and states over time, and the difficulty in proving or disproving whether it works, or defining it as a legal right. In eye-opening comparisons, she suggests that the simultaneous spread of English and the push toward multilingualism as a matter of policy in western Europe offer economic and political advantages from which the U.S. could learn. She argues that multilingualism can and should be part of both a meaningful education and responsible national citizenship in a globalized world.