Ethnopolitical Entrepreneurs presents the story of the Armenians of Glendale, California. Coming from Argentina, Armenia, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Russia, Syria, and many other countries, this group is internally fragmented and often has limited experience with the American political system. Nonetheless, Glendale's Armenians have rapidly mobilized and remade an American suburban space in their own likeness.

In telling their story, Daniel Fittante expands our understanding of US political history. From the late nineteenth-century onward, Irish, Italian, Jewish, and several other immigrant populations in large American cities began changing the country's political reality. The author shows how Glendale's Armenians—as well as many other immigrants—are now changing the country's political reality within its dynamic, multiethnic suburbs. The processes look different in various suburban contexts, but the underlying narrative holds: immigrant populations converge on suburban areas and ambitious political actors develop careers by driving coethnics' political incorporation.

Daniel Fittante is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology at Södertörn University. His research areas include political and urban sociology, diaspora studies, and immigration.

This deeply researched book tells the remarkable story of how Armenians found the route to municipal power in an emblematic Californian suburb. Ethnopolitical Entrepreneurs is an important contribution to our understanding of urban politics.

Margaret Crawford, University of California, Berkeley:

Ethnopolitical Entrepreneurs adds an important new dimension to the growing literature on Ethnoburbs. Revealing the complex dynamics between immigrant identities and local politics, this deeply researched account of the political achievements of Armenians in suburban California offers an exemplary analysis of a local topic with broad implications.

Rik Adriaans, University College, London:

Engaging and insightful, Ethnopolitical Entrepreneurs is a landmark study of the Armenian diaspora which also provides crucial new insights into the relation between the 'micro' and 'macro' levels of politics and ethnicity in the US.

Khachig Tölölyan, founding editor of Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies:

Ethnopolitical Entrepreneurs is an innovative and impressive book. It is a pioneering study that manages to present the concrete local issues faced by one immigrant, suburban community and to engage, using that example, both theoretical and political issues at the national level.