The Italian Americans: A History draws on the scholarly and popular works, along with thousands of pages of transcript interviews, of the people who participated in the PBS documentary series. This book is the product of the rich histories composed by academics, journalists, biographers, and cultural historians and told by generations of Italian Americans, including distinguished jurists and government officials; San Francisco fishermen; residents of Roseto, New Orleans, and Little Italies across the country; World War II veterans; and descendants of the documentary’s subjects. We urge readers to explore the extensive bibliography to delve deeper into the history and complex identity of the ethnic group.
In addition, I would like to credit the books that guided my thinking during the course of writing The Italian Americans: A History.
In the Introduction, the discussion of the hero’s journey is from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The material on Roseto, Pennsylvania, in “Cent’ Anni!” is drawn from the work of John Bruhn and Stewart Wolf, who conducted the community health study and wrote The Roseto Story and The Power of Clan. In addition, Italian anthropologist Carla Bianco’s The Two Rosetos compared life in Roseto, Pennsylvania, to the original Italian ancestral village Roseto Valfortore.
Source material for Chapter 1 (“La Famiglia”) included Jasper Ridley’s Garibaldi; Giuseppe Garibaldi’s My Life; Donna Gabaccia’s Italy’s Many Diasporas; A Concise History of Italy by Christopher Duggan; Between Salt Water and Holy Water by Tommaso Astarita; and In the Shadow of Vesuvius by Jordan Lancaster. I relied on both Astarita’s and Lancaster’s works for subsequent discussions about popular art, religious celebration, and customs in Naples and southern Italy. For “Our Ancestors,” the account of Garibaldi’s life in Staten Island was drawn from Jasper Ridley’s Garibaldi, as was the discussion in Chapter 2 of Garibaldi's interest in the American Civil War.
For Chapter 2 (“Who Killa da Chief?”), Bread and Respect, written by Anthony Margavio and Jerome Salomone, provided details about the early settlement of Italians in New Orleans, along with Vincenza Scarpaci’s “Walking the Color Line: Italian Immigrants in Rural Louisiana, 1880–1910,” in Are Italians White?, edited by Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno. The Booker T. Washington quote is taken from his book The Man Farthest Down. Tom Smith’s The Crescent City Lynchings provided details about the trial and lynching. Other source material about the Hennessy murder included Thomas Reppetto’s American Mafia, Humbert S. Nelli’s The Business of Crime, and Richard Gambino’s Vendetta.
Chapter 3 (“Birds of Passage”) drew upon Michael La Sorte’s compilation of early immigrant diary accounts in La Merica and B. Amore’s An Italian American Odyssey. Other source material included Humbert Nelli’s Italians in Chicago 1880–1930 and La Storia by Jerre Mangione and Ben Morreale.
For Chapter 4 (“A Secret History”), John Mariani’s How Italian Food Conquered the World helped inform the discussion of food and immigrant life. I drew upon Humbert Nelli’s and Thomas Reppetto’s work on the history of Italian Americans and crime for the discussion of the Black Hand, along with Robert Lombardo’s The Black Hand. Laurie Fabiano provided details about her grandmother’s kidnapping previously described in her historical novel Elizabeth Street. For the “Our Ancestors” account of Giuseppe Petrosino’s life, in addition to reporting in the New York Times, I relied on the book Joe Petrosino, by Arrigo Petacco.
The history of early Italian settlement in California discussed in Chapter 5 (“Up from the Ashes”) was informed by Deanna Gumina’s The Italians of San Francisco, along with Dino Cinel’s From Italy to San Francisco. For the life of A. P. Giannini, I drew primarily upon Gerald Nash’s biography, A. P. Giannini and the Bank of America, along with Todd Buchholz’s New Ideas from Dead CEOs.
Leonard Covello’s magisterial The Social Background of the Italo-American School Child and his memoir, The Heart Is the Teacher, informed Chapter 6 (“Becoming American”). Emily Leider’s biography of Rudolph Valentino (Dark Lover), as well as Robert Oberfirst’s and Irving Shulman’s biographies, provided details of the actor’s life in “Our Ancestors.”
In Chapter 7 (“Fruits of Thy Labor”), I drew upon the work of Bruce Watson’s Bread and Roses, along with Ardis Cameron’s Radicals of the Worst Sort, Mary Heaton Vorse’s A Footnote to Folly, Peter Carlson’s Roughneck, and Margaret Sanger’s “The Fighting Women of Lawrence,” originally published in the February 18, 1912, issue of the New York Call. Arturo Giovannitti’s courtroom speech is taken from Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology, edited by Joyce L. Kornbluh.
In Chapter 8 (“Taking the Streets”), the discussion of Italian-American devotion and the East Harlem festa was drawn primarily from Robert Orsi’s The Madonna of 115th Street; and of religious devotion in southern Italy, from Tommaso Astarita’s Between Salt Water and Holy Water.
Bruce Watson’s Sacco and Vanzetti informed Chapter 9 (“Guilt by Association”), along with The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti, edited by Marion Denman Frankfurter and Gardner Jackson. For the discussion of anarchist Luigi Galleani and his followers, I referred to Paul Avrich’s Sacco and Vanzetti, along with Marcella Bencivenni’s Italian Immigrant Radical Culture. The “Our Ancestors” portrait of Angela Bambace was drawn from interviews with her grandchildren Mindy and Tim Camponeschi, as well as Jennifer Guglielmo’s Living the Revolution.
The discussion of Prohibition in Chapter 10 (“A Shortcut”) was informed by Stephen Fox’s Blood and Power, along with Humbert Nelli’s The Business of Crime and Thomas Reppetto’s American Mafia.
In Chapter 11 (“The Little Flower”), I drew upon Thomas Kessner’s Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of a Modern New York, Arthur Mann’s La Guardia and La Guardia Comes to Power, and Howard Zinn’s LaGuardia in Congress. Jennifer Guglielmo’s Living the Revolution provided details about Italian-American women in the garment industry; and Nick Taylor’s American-Made, about the WPA program.
The discussion of Fascism in America in Chapter 12 (“Faith in the Fatherland”) was informed primarily by John Diggins’s Mussolini and Fascism and original newspaper accounts. Dorothy Gallagher’s All the Right Enemies provided details about Carlo Tresca’s anti-Fascist activities. Stefano Luconi of the University of Padua helped sort out the fractious history of Columbus Day. The quote about Mussolini enabling four million Italian Americans to hold up their heads comes from Caroline Ware’s The Cultural Approach to History. The story of La Guardia’s efforts to curtail Generoso Pope is from Thomas Kessner’s Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of a Modern New York. Paul David Pope’s The Deeds of My Fathers added to the account of Generoso Pope. Harvey Sachs’s biographies of Arturo Toscanini (Arturo Toscanini from 1915 to 1946 and Toscanini) informed the “Our Ancestors” portrait of the conductor.
For Chapter 13 (“Why We Fight”), I drew upon Salvatore LaGumina’s The Humble and the Heroic; William M. Tuttle Jr.’s Daddy’s Gone to War; Nancy Carnevale’s A New Language, A New World; and William Murray’s Janet, My Mother, and Me. The story of Hector Boiardi in “Why We Fight” and “Our Ancestors” was informed by interviews with Joseph and Anna Boiardi, as well as by Anna Boiardi and Stephanie Lyness’s Delicious Memories.
In Chapter 14 (“Enemy Aliens”), I included stories from the anthology Una Storia Segreta, edited by Lawrence DiStasi, as well as Stephen Fox’s The Unknown Internment. I also drew upon Jerre Mangione’s An Ethnic at Large and cited material from the Report to the Congress of the United States: A Review of the Restrictions on Persons of Italian Ancestry during World War II (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, 2001).
The discussion of Italian-American crooners in Chapter 15 (“American Dreams”) was informed by Mark Rotella’s Amore and Tony Bennett’s The Good Life. For the life of Frank Sinatra, I drew upon Frank: The Voice by James Kaplan, Why Sinatra Matters by Pete Hamill, and Sinatra in Hollywood by Tom Santopietro.
For the portrait of Gregory Corso in Chapter 16 (“Cultural Outlaws”), I drew upon Corso’s collected letters in An Accidental Autobiography; American Writers, edited by Jay Parini; and Exiled Angel, by Gregory Stephenson. Gustave Reininger’s 2009 documentary film Corso: The Last Beat, as well as an interview with Peter Sourian, additionally informed my account. The portrait of Mario Savio is drawn primarily from Robert Cohen’s Freedom’s Orator, along with Gil Fagiani’s “Mario Savio: Resurrecting an Italian American Radical,” in The Lost World of Italian-American Radicalism, edited by Philip V. Cannistraro and Gerald Meyer.
In Chapter 17 (“Crime and Prejudice”), I relied on newspaper accounts from the New York Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune for the discussion of the Kefauver and Valachi hearings, along with Stephen Fox’s Blood and Power, Thomas Reppetto’s American Mafia, and Humbert S. Nelli’s The Business of Crime. For “Our Ancestors,” details of Florence Scala’s activism came from Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor’s American Pharaoh, along with Studs Terkel’s Division Street and Chicago Tribune articles.
For Chapter 18 (“Mythmakers”), I drew upon George De Stefano’s An Offer We Can’t Refuse, and Mario Puzo’s The Godfather and The Godfather Papers and Other Confessions.
Chapter 19 (“Breaking Through”) was informed by documentary interviews, newspaper accounts, and Wayne Barrett’s biography of Rudy Giuliani (Rudy!). The portrait of Mario Cuomo was drawn from my book Were You Always an Italian?
Source material for Chapter 20 (“We’re All Italian!”) included Simone Cinotto’s The Italian American Table; The Big Book of Italian American Culture, edited by Lawrence DiStasi; and Michael La Sorte’s La Merica. The story of Marino Auriti and his Encyclopedic Palace comes from his granddaughter B. G. Firmani’s blog, Forte e Gentile, along with articles from the New York Times.