A Portrait Of The Italians In America

The influence of Italians in American cuisine, industry, sports, entertainment, and language is profound. Using photographs to illustrate more than a century of Italian experiences in the United States, the author provides an intimate and informed glimpse into the history of prejudice, hardship, celebration, and success faced by this rich Mediterranean people. A celebration of common men and women alongside notable Italian American celebrities and public figures, this book is a cultural photo album.--From publisher description.

Examines the character and history of the Italian people.

In America “the streets were paved with gold.” That was the mistaken notion of many an immigrant to the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s. On Long Island, deluded sojourners from Italy were to find that in fact there were few streets and that they themselves were to be the ones to build them. Covering more than a century of history, Long Island Italians depicts the transition of urban Italians as they moved increasingly from the city to the suburbs in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. They were attracted to Long Island by economic opportunity, the availability of arable land, home ownership possibilities, and alternatives to harsh city life. There, they became the largest of all ethnic groups, with more Americans of Italian descent living in one concentrated area than anywhere besides Italy. The Italian American presence is a continuing phenomenon, today comprising about 25 percent of the total population of Long Island. Long Island Italians graphically illustrates that Italian labor was vital to the development of Long Island roads, agriculture, railroads, and industry. By the early twentieth century, Italians made up the bulk of the work force. The book goes beyond the laborers to show also the warmth of Italian family life, the strength of the social organizations, and the rise of the politicians.

Using interviews and photographs, Anthony Riccio provides a vital supplement to our understanding of the Italian immigrant experience in the United States. In conversations around kitchen tables and in social clubs, members of New Haven's Italian American community evoke the rhythms of the streets and the pulse of life in the old ethnic neighborhoods. They describe the events that shaped the twentieth century—the Spanish Flu pandemic, the Great Depression, and World War II—along with the private histories of immigrant women who toiled under terrible working conditions in New Haven's shirt factories, who sacrificed dreams of education and careers for the economic well-being of their families. This is a compelling social, cultural, and political history of a vibrant immigrant community.

Discusses the history, culture, and religion of the Italians, factors encouraging their emigration, and their acceptance as an ethnic group in North America.

In the first comprehensive study of election law since the Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore, Richard L. Hasen rethinks the Court’s role in regulating elections. Drawing on the case files of the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist courts, Hasen roots the Court’s intervention in political process cases to the landmark 1962 case, Baker v. Carr. The case opened the courts to a variety of election law disputes, to the point that the courts now control and direct major aspects of the American electoral process. The Supreme Court does have a crucial role to play in protecting a socially constructed “core” of political equality principles, contends Hasen, but it should leave contested questions of political equality to the political process itself. Under this standard, many of the Court’s most important election law cases from Baker to Bush have been wrongly decided.