La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian American Experience

I found this book enlightening and detailed with regard to a general history, but feel in some areas actual research was set aside in favor of simply Regurgitating earlier accounts and that was incredibly disappointing.I have been doing research on some Italian families and discovered that this book had an entire page devoted to one Salvatore Pampinella and his failed Italian colony in Alabama. I located more than 40 articles about this venture, and yet, this book relied entirely on a report by Adolpho Rossi, never checking to see if it was an accurate account.The writers focused on Salvatore's failure, yet his only fault was to Dream Big. He had the backing of WL Henderson of the Southern Railway, who promised a new railroad station would be constructed there, TF Costello of the Empire Trust Company promised a new cotton mill would be built there, and a clothing manufacturer also promised to build there. Colonists paid $25 apiece to secure a lot and agreed to work the land. Salvatore sold everything he owned and secured a loans totaling $1855 because he believed in the American Dream. Nothing was built. The railroad reneged on the promises that started the entire venture. Salvatore was murdered a year later, by a disgruntled colonist.This book Relies solely on Adolpho Rossi, An Immigration specialist, sent by the Italian gov't to inspect Italian colonies in America. Rossi was in Alabama for perhaps a week, and did try to help but Rossi's opinion was that the land was fine; the leader was at fault, end of story. This land has never flourished, though others have tried. The promised railroad station was never built, and thus the factories were never built, the jobs never materialized, and the dreams of a hundred Italian families quashed.What a travesty that a book dedicated to the Italian American Experience, took such a harsh, and limited view.

The four extra copies I ordered in December were Christmas gifts for other second-generation Italo-Americans. We greatly loved our immigrant ancestors - grandparents, aunts and uncles and innumerable groups of "commare and cumpari" in varying degrees of filiation to the nuclear family - and from them all learned an honorable way of life, steeped in the rich Italo-Greek culture of the southern Italian "Mezzogiorno". We learned early on, as children, in hours and hours of discourse at Sunday dinner, what courage and hardship urged them from Italy and what similar hardship met them here, what it meant to kiss parents goodbye and know you would never see them again in this life, never be able to have them embrace their grandchildren and finally hear of their passing by a letter two weeks after the fact. La Storia pays fitting homage to these men and women, our heroic forebears, in a context only a historian can encompass, a rapidly vanishing treasure as their succeeding generations are clueless and have nothing to contribute to vapid Western "culture" increasingly severed from its Greco-Roman moorings.I spoke our Calabrian and Neapolitan dialect fluently from childhood, cherished our culture as sacrosanct, followed our traditions - religious and culinary - with consummate fidelity and do so fervently and proudly to this day, some 110 years+ since the day my Grandpa set foot on Ellis Island in "Nova Yorka". La Storia filled in the blanks - not only undisclosed details of life there and then here, and the fundamental philosophical / religious mindset underpinning their very strict codes of morality and family, but the virtually unknown history of the Italians here [OK - so they were from north of Rome and very questionably "Italian" in our eyes, but...] in America since the Revolution. A riveting read!

This book is a history which is also a good read. Very strong on early immigrant experiences up to the early 1900's. It gave me a perspective on those who preceded me to the US and the hardships they endured as the lowest-on-the-totem pole for decades. It is also a history of the United States and how it treated its newcomers (shamefully). This book is strong on the labor movement.That said, I must comment that the book falls flat on post-WWII history of Italian-Americans. It devotes scores of pages to barely-published poets and barely-known niche authors. It goes on and on with movie reviews. But there is no discussion of Italian-Americans in the hard sciences and medicine (Enrico Fermi has NO mention). The singer Madonna gets more print that SCOTUS Justice Antonin Scalia. And Italian-Americans' most pervasive contribution to US culture after WWII - cuisine - is not discussed at all.I recommend this book. But if you skip the last third, you won't miss anything.

Lots of information to learn. Sometimes the chronology order was difficult to follow or repeated. Could have benefited from addition editing, but don’t let that stop you. Great book!

As the grandson of Italian immigrants who didn't hear a lot about why my family came here from southern Italy I was looking for a book that would fill in some of the blanks. This book does that and more. It goes in depth about immigration, why Italians, especially southern Italians came to America, where they settled, their lives here, the good and bad times. It covers the history of Italy and tells why the unification of Italy caused such a mass migration of people to the US. Mangione goes deep into the oppression and hatred Italians faced, not only from other nationalities but from fellow Italians, Covering the period from the Revolution to the 1990s you read about common, everyday people trying to make a life here, and about the ones who became famous and are household names. A great book, one that makes me proud to be Italian-American.

I thought Jerre Mangione & Ben Morreale's work will hold up as a good reference book for anyone interested in the Italian / american experience. It provides a good overview of what life was like for the newly arrived immigrant; and explains many of their problems and sometimes their marvelous solutions to their problems with very sucessful results .

It was a sign of the times: people moving their lives to provide food for their families. Sadly the story is still happening but in different parts of the world. Must read if you are of Italian background.

L'ho ordinato il lunedì, il martedì era già arrivato. Il libro mi sembra abbastanza interessante e ben suddiviso, utile per chi, oltre a voler informerei, necessità di fare una ricerca accurata

Delivered on time. Gave as a gift