My Italian Library

Italian Genealogy

Genealogists Guide to Discovering Your Italian Ancestors: How to Find and Record Your Unique Heritage by Lynn Nelson.  I can't say enough about this helpful book:   indispensable, essential, can't-live-without-it if you're looking for your Italian ancestors.  Together with my local Family History Library, I have compiled an extensive database of my ancestors all the way back to the 18th century-without leaving Seattle.  My sister, Carolyn, just happened to find this book at Barnes & Noble.  When I first stole it from her, neither of us knew what a treasure she had stumbled upon.  Now we do!  And Carolyn has graciously "given" me the book.  You can get yours at Powell's.

Italian Genealogical Records:  How to Use Italian Civil, Ecclesiastical & Other Records in Family History Research by Trafford R. Cole.  Because the civil records begin in 1809, you must use the church records if you want to extend your research before 1809.  This book will show you how.  Available at Powell's.

Finding Italian Roots:  the Complete Guide for Americans by John Phillip Colletta.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  Whether you choose to conduct your family research by traveling to Italy or by writing to town archives and other repositories of family information, this is the complete guide for you.  Finding Italian Roots briefly discloses the resources available here in the United States for climbing your family tree back to your immigrant ancestor, then how you can tap into the wealth of information available in the town halls, archives, churches, and libraries of Italy.

Our Italian Surnames by Joseph G. Fucilla.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  Our Italian Surnames covers every fact of Italian names and naming practices.  It is here we discover, for example, that bussolari is Italian for compass, orsini means bear, and passalacqua stands for butterfly. In addition to sections on given names and the evolution of Italian surnames, the book contains chapters devoted to pet names, botanical names, geographical names, bird names, insect names, occupational names, and more.  Our Italian Surnames is written for a popular audience, and each chapter of the book is a separate and informative unit in itself.  Complete with a list of sources and an index of more than 7,500 names, Our Italian Surnames is a monument to the late Professor Fucilla's lifelong interest in the language and names of Italia.

History/Sociology

The Italians: A Full-Length Portrait Featuring Their Manners and Morals by Luigi Barzini.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  In this consummate portrait of the Italian people, bestselling author, publisher, journalist, and politician Luigi Barzini delves deeply into the Italian national character, discovering both its great qualities and its imperfections.  Barzini is startlingly frank as he examines 'the two Italies':  the one that created and nurtured such luminaries as Dante Alighieri, St. Thomas of Aquino, and Leonardo da Vinci; the other, feeble and prone to catastrophe, backward in political action if not in thought, "invaded, ravaged, sacked, and humiliated in every century."  Deeply ambivalent, Barzini approaches his task with a combination of love, hate, disillusion, and affectionate paternalism, resulting in a completely original, thoughtful, and probing picture of his countrymen.

The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy by T.R. Reid.  A fascinating read.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  Now comprising 25 nations and 450 million citizens, the EU has more people, more wealth, and more votes on every international body than the United States.  It eschews military force but offers guaranteed health care and free university educations.  And the new "United States of Europe" is determined to be a superpower.  Tracing the EU's emergence from the ruins of World War II and its influence everywhere from international courts to supermarket shelves, T. R. Reid explores the challenge it poses to American political and economic supremacy. The United States of Europe is essential reading.

Were You Always an Italian?:  Ancestors and Other Icons of Italian America by Maria Laurino.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  "Were you always an Italian?" was the question with which then-governor Mario Cuomo greeted journalist Maria Laurino.  The question struck home. Laurino was exploring the governor's ethnic roots, yet only a few years earlier she had contemplated chopping the vowels off her name.  In this thoughtful, penetrating, and hilarious examination of third-generation ethnic identity, Laurino dismantles the stereotypes bedeviling Italian-Americans. With a sympathetic but clear eye, she writes about guidos, bimbettes, and mammoni (mama's boys in Italy).  She examines the clashing aesthetics of Giorgio Armani and Gianni Versace, and unravels the etymology of southern Italian dialect words like gavone or bubidabetz.  And, careful to avoid the perils of nostalgia, she explores the pungent influence on her life of Italian attitudes towards family work and faith.

Italian Immigrants/Immigration

Passage To Liberty: the Story of Italian Immigration and the Rebirth of America by A Kenneth Ciongoli.  Available at Powell's.  A beautiful book, a great gift.  Publisher comments:  Passage to Liberty recaptures the drama of the 19th and 20th century immigration to America through photos, letters, and other artifacts - uniquely replicated in three-dimensional facsimile form . . . the text uses the stories of individuals and families - from early explorers, through the wave of 19th century impoverished families, to contemporary figures - to recapture the rich heritage the Italian people carried with them over the waves, and planted anew in the American soil.

Memoir/Personal Story/Other

The Wisdom of Angels:  Unearthing My Italian Roots by Martha T. Cummings.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  Two Italian-American women, cousins, go to Italy in search of their roots.  Their search brings the cousins to a 435 year-old family dwelling, a town hall - where they uncover grandmother's baptismal font and the great-grandparents' wedding.  Upon finding and touching these validations of their history, the two cousins break into tears and welcome, with unequivocal joy, all that their Italian culture is and all that their Italian culture means to them. Finally, they begin to understand who they are, and they savor the chances to uncover all that there is that has brought them to this place.

Dances With Luigi:  A Grandson's Search for His Italian Roots by Paul E. Paolicelli.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  In this spirited memoir, veteran TV journalist Paul Paolicelli does what many of us can only dream of - he picks up and moves to a foreign country in an attempt to trace his ancestral roots.  With the help of Luigi, his guide and companion, he travels through Italy - Rome, Gamberale, Matera, Miglionico, Alessandria, even Mussolini's hometown of Predappio - and discovers the tragic legacy of the Second World War that is still affecting the Old Country. . . .  More that just a spiritual account of one man's ancestral search, Dances With Luigi is also a stunning portrait of la bella Italia - both old and new - that is painted beautifully in all of its glamour, history, and contradiction.

Under the Southern Sun: Stories of the Real Italy and the Americans It Created by Paul E. Paolicelli.  The second installment of Paolicelli's journey.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  Recently there has been a seemingly endless stream of books praising the glories of ancient and modern Rome, fretting over Venice's rising tides and moldering galleries, celebrating the Tuscan countryside, wines and cuisine.  But there have been curiously few writings that deal directly with Italy as the country of origin for the grand and great-grandparents of nearly twenty-six million Americans.  The greatest majority - more than eight out of ten - of those American descendants of immigrant Italians aren't the progeny of Venetian doges or Tuscan wealth, but are the diaspora of Southern Italians, people from a place very different than Renaissance Florence or the modern political entity of Rome.  Southern Italians, mostly from villages and towns sprinkled about the dramatic and remote countryside of Italian provinces even now tourists find only with determination and rental cars.

Stolen Figs, and Other Adventures in Calabria by Mark Rotella. Another fascinating story of an American finding his roots.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  Rotella's Stolen Figs is a marvelous evocation of Calabria and Calabrians, whose way of life is largely untouched by the commerce that has made Tuscany and Umbria into tourist redoubts. This is a model travelogue - at once charming and wise, and full of the earthy sense of life that characterizes Calabria and its people.

Italian Neighbors by Tim Parks.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  In this deliciously seductive account of an Italian neighborhood with a statue of the Virgin at one end of the street, a derelict bottle factory at the other, and a wealth of exotic flora and fauna in between, acclaimed novelist Tim Parks celebrates ten years of living with his wife, Rita, in Verona, Italy.  More than a travel book, Italian Neighbors is a sparkling, witty, beautifully observed tale of how the most curious people and places gradually assume the familiarity of home.  Selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Italian Neighbors is a rare work that manages to be both a portrait and an invitation for everyone who has ever dreamed about Italy.

An Italian Education:  the Further Adventures of an Expatriate in Veronaby Tim Parks.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  Parks's Italian Neighbors chronicled his arrival in Italy and his initiation into the byzantine complexities of Italian social and cultural life.  Never a tourist, no longer a "transient," he focuses, this time, on his children, born and bred in Italy, and on the other children in the small village near Verona where he lives.  Parks builds a fascinating portrait of Italian family life:  its often bizarre foibles and its extraordinary solidity, the moral contradictions, the rituals and rites of passage. . . .  And the whole panoramic journey winds up with a deliciously seductive evocation of an Italian beach holiday that epitomizes everything that's best about life in Italy and everything that makes it so different from our own.

My Father Came from Italy :  A Daughter's Memoir of Reunion byMaria Coletta McLean.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  After 64 years, Mezzabotte Coletta, a retired truck driver for a Toronto macaroni factory, is returning to his native Italia.  In a village called Supino, said to take its name from the crossroads where Christ rested, supine, en route from Rome to Naples, is a rundown villa bought sight unseen by Mezzabotte's daughter Maria - an olive branch after years of family struggle. While she and her husband Bob breathe in the chatter of local tradesmen, the fragrant offerings of well-wishing neighbors and the aroma of fine wine, her father awaits in Canada anticipating the day he will again touch Italian soil. Hoping to avoid the wounds of his difficult marriage and the onset of senility, father and daughter retrace footsteps that yield from the Saint of Special Favors a miraculous recovery.

Genealogy

The Genealogy Sourcebook by Sharon Debartolo Carmack.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  Beyond the family Bible where can more information be found?  This resource is a complete guide to the fascinating world of tracing ancestry with information on where to start the search, what kinds of resources are available, and how to best utilize them.

Family Tree Guide To Finding Your Ellis Island Ancestors by Sharon Debartolo Carmack.  Powell's.  Publisher comments:  An estimated 40 percent of Americans descended from an Ellis Island immigrant - as many as 100 million people - but until now there was no comprehensive guide for researching these early ancestors. . . .   It's the perfect place for the millions of people who visit the Ellis Island Web site and museum to turn for practical research help.

History/Sociology

Christ Stopped at Eboli:  The Story of a Year by Carlo Levi.  A classic.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  It was to Lucania, a desolate land in southern Italy, that Carlo Levi - a doctor, painter, philosopher, and man of letters - was confined as a political prisoner because of his opposition to Italy's Fascist government at the start of the Ethiopian war in 1935.  While there, Levi reflected on the harsh landscape and its inhabitants, peasants who lived the same lives their ancestors had, constantly fearing black magic and the near presence of death. In so doing, Levi offered a starkly beautiful and moving account of a place and a people living outside the boundaries of progress and time.

Feeling Italian:  The Art of Ethnicity in America (Nation of Newcomers) by Thomas J. Ferraro.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  Southern Italian emigration to the United States peaked a full century ago - descendents are now fourth and fifth generation, dispersed from their old industrial neighborhoods, professionalized, and fully integrated into the melting pot.  Surely the social historians are right:  Italian Americans are fading into the twilight of their ethnicity.  So, why is the American imagination enthralled by The Sopranos, and other portraits of Italian-ness?  Italian American identity, now a mix of history and fantasy, flesh-and-bone people and all-too-familiar caricature, still has something to teach us, including why each of us, as citizens of the U.S. twentieth century and its persisting cultures, are to some extent already Italian.

Are Italians White?:  How Race Is Made in America by Jennifer Guglielmo.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  When Italian immigrants landed on American shores they were outsiders:  dark in complexion, culturally different, and unable to speak English. Over time the vibrant community assimilated and moved from being ethnically suspect to being racially privileged as America divided into black and white.   This dazzling collection of original essays from some of the country's leading thinkers asks the rather intriguing question:  Are Italians White? Each piece carefully explores how, when and why whiteness became important to Italian Americans, and the significance of gender, class and nation to racial identity.

Italians Then, Mexicans Now:  Immigrant Origins and Second-Generation Progress, 1890 to 2000 by John Perlmann.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  Joel Perlmann offers a sustained comparison of immigrant and second-generation wellbeing over the past hundred years. Using the latest immigration data from the census and other recent studies - as well as a century of census data - Perlmann paints a more optimistic picture of immigrant prospects than is envisioned by many other scholars of immigration.  Rich with historical data, Italians Then, Mexicans Now persuasively argues that today's Mexican immigrants are making slow but steady socioeconomic progress and may one day reach parity with earlier immigrant groups who moved up into the heart of American middle-class society.

Castel Del Monte:  Geometric Marvel of the Middle Ages by Heintz Goetz.  Available at Bookfinder.com.  Publisher comments:  In the south of Italy stands one of the most beautiful and fascinating castles of the Middle Ages, commissioned by the brilliant Emperor Frederick II of the Hohenstaufen dynasty.  Castel del Monte is unique in the history of art and architecture, and the mystery surrounding its function and meaning has inspired the most varied theories, most of which are based on speculation rather than solid analysis. Heinz Gotze presents an in-depth study of this enigmatic structure and explores its singularity in the history of art and architecture. This illustrated book presents the reader with insights into the bastion's structure while exploring the cultural influences common to the entire Mediterranean region, including that of medieval Arabic geometry, and the effect these factors had on the conception and construction of Castel del Monte.

Immigrants/Immigration

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The Other Side:  Growing up Italian in America by Vincent Panella.  Available through Bibliofind.

Italian Immigrants (Immigration to the United States) by Michael Burgan.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  A highly appealing introduction to the topic, Italian Immigrants provides a brief history of Italian Americans, their contributions to American society, and highlights of their history.  After discussing the first Italian immigrants in colonial America, the book moves on to describe the first great wave of migration and the role of Italians during the American Revolution and the early republic.  Through an engaging text and helpful photographs and illustrations, readers will learn how economic opportunities, family and church, and old community ties affected these Italian immigrants.  This clear and nicely illustrated volume closes with an exploration of Italian Americans today, emphasizing the fight against the enduring stereotype of Italians and organized crime.

Italian Immigrants, 1880-1920 by Anne M. Todd.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  Explore the history of U.S. immigration in the Coming to America series.  Readers will learn the reasons why people left their homelands to start a new life in America and will follow their journeys through time lines and maps.  Recipes and activity sidebars also allow students to celebrate the rich heritage and cultural contributions each group has made to American society.

Italians in Australia by Gianfranco Cresciani.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  The Italians comprised the first truly large wave of immigrants to arrive in Australia from Southern Europe after World War II and currently number around one million.  Gianfranco Cresciani's authoritative account of their significant contributions to the development of Australian society through the twentieth century is comprehensive.  As an authority on Italian life in Australia, Cresciani provides a definitive account of the Italo-Australian community entering the twenty-first century.

Immigrants in the Lands of Promise:  Italians in Buenos Aires and New York City, 1870-1914 by Samuel L. Baily.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  Most studies of immigration to the New World have focused on the United States.  Samuel L. Baily's eagerly awaited book broadens that perspective through a comparative analysis of Italian immigrants to Buenos Aires and New York City before World War I.  It is one of the few works to trace Italians from their villages of origin to different destinations abroad.  Baily examines the adjustment of Italians in the two cities, comparing such factors as employment opportunities, skill levels, pace of migration, degree of prejudice, and development of the Italian community.  Of the two destinations, Buenos Aires offered Italians more extensive opportunities, and those who elected to move there tended to have the appropriate education or training to succeed.  These immigrants, who adjusted more rapidly than their North American counterparts, adopted a long-term strategy of investing savings in their New World home.  In New York, in contrast, the immigrants found fewer skilled and white-collar jobs, more competition from previous immigrant groups, greater discrimination, and a less supportive Italian enclave.  As a result, rather than put down roots, many sought to earn money as rapidly as possible and send their earnings back to family in Italy.  Baily views the migration process as a global phenomenon. Building on his richly documented case studies, the author briefly examines Italian communities in San Francisco, Toronto, and Sao Paulo.  He establishes a continuum of immigrant adjustment in urban settings, creating a landmark study in both immigration and comparative history.

From Paesani to White Ethnics:  The Italian Experience in Philadelphia by Stefano Luconi.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  From Paesani to White Ethnics analyzes the process by which people of Italian descent renegotiated their sense of community and ethnic self-perception in Philadelphia from the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth.  At the turn of the century, Italian immigrants who arrived in Philadelphia originally formed allegiances and social clusters based on their localistic, provincial, or regional ties.  By the late 1930s, however, the emergence of Italian nationalism together with the end of mass immigration from Italy and the appearance of an American-born second generation of individuals with loose ties to the land of their parents contributed to bring together Italian Americans from disparate local backgrounds and helped them to develop a common national identity that they had lacked upon arrival in the United States.  Luconi explains how Italian Americans continued to distance themselves from other European minorities throughout the early postwar years until ethnic defensiveness against the alleged encroachments of African Americans as well as racial tensions over housing forced them to extend the boundaries of their ethnic identity in the 1960s and to redefine it within the broader context of the white ethnic movement. This process climaxed as Philadelphia polarized along racial lines on issues such as public education and crime in the late 1960s and at the time of Frank Rizzo's mayoral campaigns in the 1970 and 1980s.

Chicago's Italians by Dominic Candelord.  Available at Powell's.   Publisher comments:  Since 1850, Chicago has felt the benefits of a vital Italian presence.  These immigrants formed much of the unskilled workforce employed to build up this and many other major U.S. cities.  From often meager and humble beginnings, Italians built and congregated in neighborhoods that came to define the Chicago landscape. P ost-World War II development threatened this communal lifestyle, and subsequent generations of Italian Americans have been forced to face new challenges to retain their ethnic heritage and identity in a changing world.

Italians in Chicago (Images of America)by Dominic Candeloro.  Available at Powell's.

From Sicily to Elizabeth Street:   Housing and Social Change Among Italian Immigrants, 1880-1930 (Suny Series, American Social History) by Donna R. Gabaccia.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  From Sicily to Elizabeth Street analyzes the relationship of environment to social behavior.  It revises our understanding of the Italian-American family and challenges existing notions of the Italian immigrant experience by comparing everyday family and social life in the agrotowns of Sicily to life in a tenement neighborhood on New York's Lower East Side at the turn of the century.  Moving historical understanding beyond such labels as "uprooted" and "huddled masses," the book depicts the immigrant experience from the perspective of the immigrants themselves.  It begins with a uniquely detailed description of the Sicilian backgrounds and moves on to recreate Elizabeth Street in lower Manhattan, a neighborhood inhabited by some 8,200 Italians.  The author shows how the tightly knit conjugal family became less important in New York than in Sicily, while a wider association of kin groups became crucial to community life. Immigrants, who were mostly young people, began to rely more on their related peers for jobs and social activities and less on parents who remained behind.

Italians in Michigan (Discovering the Peoples of Michigan) by Russell M. Magnaghi.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  For more than 350 years, Italian immigrants have played important roles in the opening and development of the land that is now Michigan, from their participation in the French fur trade up to the present day. Through an emphasis on the family as the essential institution in ethnic group success, Russell M. Magnaghi celebrates the accomplishments of Michigan's famous and not-so-famous Italian sons and daughters as he documents their struggles and achievements.  Through the tenacity and hard work of the immigrants and their descendents, Italians in Michigan have progressed from unskilled laborers to some of the highest positions in business, politics, culture, and education.

Italians in New Orleans (Images of America) by Dominic Candeloro.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:   Between 1850 and 1870, New Orleans boasted the largest Italian-born population of any city in the United States.  Its early Italian immigrants included musicians, business leaders, and diplomats.  Sadly, in 1891, 11 members of the large Sicilian settlement in New Orleans were victims of the largest mass lynching in American history.  However, by 1910, the city's French Quarter was a "Little Palermo" with Italian entrepreneur, laborers, and restauranteurs dominating the scene.

Italians of Northeastern Pennsylvania (Images of America) by Stephanie Longo.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  The Italians of this region have been proudly celebrating their heritage since their arrival in this country with traditional festivals, including La Corsa dei Ceri in Jessup and Dunmore's procession in honor of St. Rocco.  Using vintage and recent photographs, Italians of Northeastern Pennsylvania shows how the Italian immigrants to this area, some of whom arrived with little more than the clothes on their back, became well-respected community leaders.  Through hard work and dedication, they have made northeastern Pennsylvania into an area that defines the term "ethnic pride."

Lives of Their Own:  Blacks, Italians, & Poles in Pittsburgh, 1900-1960 by John Bodnar.  Available at Powell's.

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Italians of Western Canadaby Giovanni Germano.  Available at Powell's.

Memoir/Personal Story/Other

Heel to Toe:  Encounters in the South of Italy by Charles Lister.  Publisher comments:  Not many people go to the south of Italy.  South of Naples, they say, belongs more to Africa than to Europe.  But it is through this extraordinary region that Charles Lister travels, first by bicycle and then on an erratic moped forced on him by a bartender.  Starting in Brindisi, at the foot of the Appian Way, he heads into a region with a glorious history, riven by contradictions and straining at its enforced union with the rest of Italy.  In the course of his journey, Lister is nearly bombed by the local mafia, meets a number of tomb robbers, and is equally enchanted by the wine and the women of the region.  The people he meets along the way are by turns warm, aloof, and curious, and the landscape is magnificent - the reminders of fallen empires and ancient wars ever present.  A fascinating, utterly enjoyable portrait of a little-known part of Italy, belonging firmly to the best traditions of travel writing.

The Italian American Reader:  A Collection of Outstanding Fiction, Memoirs, Journalism, Essays, and Poetry by Bill Tonelli.  Available at Powell's.  Publisher comments:  This anthology is a genuine landmark - the first general-reader hardcover collection of writing by Italian American authors.  It is part manifesto, part Sunday dinner - a gathering of voices old and new, some speaking in the accents of another age, some completely contemporary and assured, all together for the first time.  To stand with all the other popular media images we represent, now, at last, one exists in written form, the literature of Italian American life - the past, present, and future, which is also America's future.