This remarkably detailed work is still the best introduction to the German influence in American life and culture from the colonial period to 1927, the year of the book’s original publication. Leaving no stone unturned, The German Element in the United States is conveniently arranged in two volumes. Volume I treats German immigration, colonial and early national settlement, and participation in the great political or military upheavals of American history, while Volume II looks at the economic, social, cultural, and educational contributions made by persons of German birth/descent and Germanic cultural influences. While some of the information in these volumes has no doubt been superseded, the researcher would have to venture far and wide to discover in another work anything approaching Faust’s detailed bibliography or the index of more than 10,000 references.