Signed by the author.

Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican-American Race, explores the paradox of Mexican Americans' legal racial status as "white" with their non-white position in American society.

The 288-page book, published by New York University Press, spans the disciplines of law, history and sociology, revealing how the construction of Mexicans as an American racial group proved central to the larger process of restructuring the American racial order from the Mexican War (1846-48) to the early 20th century.

Manifest Destinies focuses a great deal on New Mexico history, since two-thirds of all Mexican Americans in 1850 lived in present-day New Mexico (the remaining one-third was divided between California and Texas). Gómez draws on her expertise in the fields of law, history, and sociology to explain why New Mexico remained in political limbo as a federal territory for so long before gaining statehood in 1912.