The title, perhaps plucked from John Lukacs' pithy "it is easier to become an American than to become American," has a panoply of images to vivify it. Apart from the passport, becoming American is to join the "mess," "kaleidoscope," "Babylon," "Babel," "griddle" (the new melting pot), "wretched refuse" of all the other e pluribus Americans.

But "Becoming Americans" raises another question too, of grace: How "becoming" is America itself? This is a question of beauty - the motley landscape, the protean face of America are gorgeously rendered - but also of etiquette, the proper province of a nation that has often played poor host. The answer has been detained; it is in custody at Guantanamo. Its release is pending.