A second generation of Italian Americans begins to enter the labor movement, politics, sports and entertainment. Fiorello LaGuardia beats Tammany Hall, the Irish Political machine in New York, to become Mayor and represent the little guy. Joe DiMaggio, the son of a fisherman in San Francisco, becomes a powerhouse, who breaks the record for consecutive hits and becomes an All-American hero. But with the outbreak of World War II, Italians' loyalty to...

A brief history of the Italian Risorgimento provides the context for the great flight from the mezzogiorno region, as well as the roots of the first generation's distinctive psychology. Through the travels of Italian migrant workers, we understand the transnational nature of these Birds of Passage. By the late 19th century, Italians begin to put down roots. Little Italy's spring up in urban areas throughout the U.S. But the first generation holding...

Each summer for the past one hundred years, local residents on an otherwise tranquil block in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn turn their lives upside down for two weeks in order to host the reenactment of a centuries-old religious pageant. The annual feast of San Paulino di Nola has its roots in an archaic fertility rite with exotic pagan undertones. Italians from the Campanese village of Nola, who emigrated to Williamsburg in the 1880's, brought...