The essays in this volume look at Asian Americans, their ideas and ways of life, on their own terms, relating them to both Asian and United States history. Roger Daniels presents an overview of East Asian immigrants through a review of the literature by American historians. An essay by Stanford M. Lyman, which follows, analyzes San Francisco's Chinatown before 1910, and offers an interpretation in terms of sociology of conflict. Harry H. L. Kitano's essay, which employs the theory of "middleman minority," seeks to define how Japanese Americans fit into the American social system, by analyzing an example of labor unionization. Lee and Chang-su Houchin's essay on the Korean experience in the United States emphasizes the political ideologies and activities of this immigrant group. The essay by H. Brett Melendy and Gary R. Hess demonstrates that, although distinguishable ethnically from Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, East Indians and Filipinos came to the United States under similar circumstances and experienced the same white prejudice and economic victimization. Finally Shih-Shan H. Ts'ai's article summarizes Chinese historiography on the immigration dispute. This book contains extensive bibliographical references. (Author/EB)