Enciclopedia del Espanol en los Estados Unidos: Anuario del Instituto Cervantes 2008

This monumental work is probably the most comprehensive study ever compiled on the 500 year-old Hispanic presence in U.S. territory, with virtually no topic uncovered, from history to linguistics, media, business, and more. Structured as a series of essays by some 20 expert from all over the United States, the book delves into both the first Spanish settlements in the 16th and 17th centuries in Florida, Louisiana, and New Mexico and the more recent immigrant waves from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Dominican Republic. Most of the book is about the present, with a strong focus on the demographics of the Latin American migration. (This is the right place to learn that there are 11,500 Cubans in Nevada and that a third of all children in California, Texas, and New Mexico speak Spanish at home.) Many pages are devoted to the real status of the language nationwide, from an assessment of the actual fluency of the over 40 million so-called Spanish-speakers to the explosion of students of Spanish in recent years and the individual characteristics of each community's parlance. There's even space for speculation, as when award-winning novelist Eduardo Lago ponders the emergence of a new ""Hispanic nationality and a new Spanish dialect,"" which he expects to be preponderant in the Hispanic world. While it's too soon to corroborate such a thing, what's beyond discussion is that every library-academic, school, public-in America should stock a few copies of this hefty but illuminating volume. Carlos Rodr\xEDguez Martorell, East Elmhurst, NY