Americans by adoption

The volume collects nine brief biographies of men who left their native lands to become American citizens, tracing each subject's early background, career development, and public influence across areas such as science, engineering, public life, music, industry, and the arts. Emphasis falls on how the opportunities of their adopted country enabled them to pursue work to the full measure of their abilities, whether through inventive ambition, civic reform, creative practice, or enterprise, and on the broader theme that voluntary migration was driven by a desire to be judged and to contribute according to individual merit.