Bilingual education policy in the United States raises contentious issues of national identity, federalism, power, ethnicity, and power. San Miguel (history, U. of Houston) looks at the origins and evolution of federal bilingual education policy over the past four decades, focusing on the role played by organized proponents and opponents of bilingual education. He argues that a collective challenge by language specialists, civil rights activists, language minorities, professional educators, and others to the cultural and political hegemony of dominant groups managed to lay the groundwork for federal policy and were not faced with organized opposition by those that favored assimilationism and the structural exclusion of and discrimination against ethnic minorities until the late 1970s. San Miguel includes an extended bibliographic essay on sources written during the time period under examination. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)