The Big Book of Italian American Culture

By Lawrence Distasi

Book Overview

The ultimate gift for anyone of Italian descent, this beautiful anthology will be a family treasure--the first compendium of Italian-American culture as seen by its constituents. 250 black-and-white illustrations.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060160306
• ISBN13: 9780060160302
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 251 Pages
• Weight: 2.50 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The Big Book of Italian American Culture

Excellent service, prompt delivery, excellent conditon as described, packaged well. Would use again.

A joy to read and a treasure to own!

It is a compendium, in soft-cover magazine/textbook style, of stories about the lives of Italian immigrants in America. The people are so different and the stories vary so much one from the other that it defies anything you have ever heard about Italian stereotypes. If the immigrants could be classified at all it would be that they all worked tirelessly in their pursuits. Not all achieved success as we know it. Take the story about "the Human Mole" , Baldasare Forestiere who bought a large plot of land and, to the embarrassment of his family, spent forty years creating a ten-acre subterranean maze of curving passageways, rooms, courtyards, patios and grottos beneath the surface of his property. There is a description of life on a mushroom farm; a beautiful poem about a summer kitchen in the middle of a garden in Brooklyn; a housewife who took in single Italian boarders and treated them like family. Then there are the famous Italians, Giannini, Mario Lanza, Enrico Caruso and the infamous Lucky Luciano, Al Capone etc. I highly recommend this book it is filled with interesting information, a great reference book, heart-warming and entertaining. This book is a joy to read and a treasure to own.