The Routledge History of Italian Americans weaves a narrative of the trials and triumphs of one of the nation’s largest ethnic groups. This history, comprising original essays by leading scholars and critics, addresses themes that include the Columbian legacy, immigration, the labor movement, discrimination, anarchism, Fascism, World War II patriotism, assimilation, gender identity and popular culture. This landmark volume offers a clear and accessible overview of work in the growing academic field of Italian American Studies. Rich illustrations bring the story to life, drawing out the aspects of Italian American history and culture that make this ethnic group essential to the American experience.

This richly researched, beautifully illustrated volume illuminates an important, overlooked part of American history. From extensive archival materials and interviews with well-known Italian Americans, Maria Laurino strips away stereotypes and nostalgia to tell the complicated, centuries-long story of the true Italian-American experience. Looking beyond the familiar Little Italys and stereotypes fostered by The Godfather and The Sopranos, Laurino reveals surprising, fascinating lives: Italian-Americans working on sugar-cane plantations in Louisiana to those who were lynched in New Orleans; the banker who helped rebuild San Francisco after the great earthquake; families interned as “enemy aliens” in World War II. From anarchist radicals to “Rosie the Riveter” to Nancy Pelosi, Andrew Cuomo, and Bill de Blasio; from traditional artisans to rebel songsters like Frank Sinatra, Dion, Madonna, and Lady Gaga, this book is both exploration and celebration of the rich legacy of Italian-American life. Readers can discover the history chronologically, chapter by chapter, or serendipitously by exploring the trove of supplemental materials. These include interviews, newspaper clippings, period documents, and photographs that bring the history to life.

Glimpse of Italian American?s social customs, family life, traditional food and drink, festivals, and more. There are also brief biographies of famous Italian Americans who rose to prominence.

This book introduces readers to a wide range of interpretations that take oral history and folklore as the premise with a focus on Italian and Italian American culture in disciplines such as history, ethnography, memoir, art, and music.

The entire Italian American experience—from America's earliest days through the present—is now available in a single volume. This wide-ranging work relates the entire saga of the Italian-American experience from immigration through assimilation to achievement. The book highlights the enormous contributions that Italian Americans—the fourth largest European ethnic group in the United States—have made to the professions, politics, academy, arts, and popular culture of America. Going beyond familiar names and stories, it also captures the essence of everyday life for Italian Americans as they established communities and interacted with other ethnic groups. In this single volume, readers will be able to explore why Italians came to America, where they settled, and how their distinctive identity was formed. A diverse array of entries that highlight the breadth of this experience, as well as the multitude of ways in which Italian Americans have influenced U.S. history and culture, are presented in five thematic sections. Featured primary documents range from a 1493 letter from Christopher Columbus announcing his discovery to excerpts from President Barack Obama's 2011 speech to the National Italian American Foundation. Readers will come away from this book with a broader understanding of and greater appreciation for Italian Americans' contributions to the United States.

Best Food Book of 2014 by The Atlantic Looking at the historic Italian American community of East Harlem in the 1920s and 30s, Simone Cinotto recreates the bustling world of Italian life in New York City and demonstrates how food was at the center of the lives of immigrants and their children. From generational conflicts resolved around the family table to a vibrant food-based economy of ethnic producers, importers, and restaurateurs, food was essential to the creation of an Italian American identity. Italian American foods offered not only sustenance but also powerful narratives of community and difference, tradition and innovation as immigrants made their way through a city divided by class conflict, ethnic hostility, and racialized inequalities. Drawing on a vast array of resources including fascinating, rarely explored primary documents and fresh approaches in the study of consumer culture, Cinotto argues that Italian immigrants created a distinctive culture of food as a symbolic response to the needs of immigrant life, from the struggle for personal and group identity to the pursuit of social and economic power. Adding a transnational dimension to the study of Italian American foodways, Cinotto recasts Italian American food culture as an American "invention" resonant with traces of tradition.

A colorful narrative of the "Italian experience" in America traces the history of this ethnic community in the new world and celebrates its accomplishments from Frank Sinatra to Lee Iacocca.

Rhode Island residents greeted the 1997 publication of a photographic history of their state with much enthusiasm. The first volume of Italian-Americans in Rhode Island chronicled the Italian-American community's rising significance in the state's development--in government, business, religion, and civic affairs. The author of that volume, Joseph Muratore, has worked again to produce a second book on Italian-Americans in Rhode Island that includes many new images. Italian-Americans in Rhode Island Volume II covers the history of the early Italian settlers, who quickly established themselves in the jewelry business, the manufacturing field, and construction business, thus creating thousands of jobs for the immigrants who followed. With their aggressive ingenuity, Italian-Americans developed, manufactured, and assembled machinery and equipment capable of mass production. In this book, the author captures in photographs the primitive plants and equipment used, the local businesses that the immigrants committed themselves to, and the results of the Italian-Americans' contributions to the economic development of Rhode Island.

Journalist and writer Maria Laurino blends autobiography and cultural history in this revealing look at Italian culture and its impact on Italian-American, and American, life. Particularly valuable is her discussion of stereotyping (both nostalgic and negative) and her insightful description of her struggle, beginning in adolescence, with her own Italian identity. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR