This podcast aims to explain Italian characters and behavior. A full-length portrait of my compatriots may occasionally be witty, grave, cynical, compassionate, melancholy, glittering, scholarly, and stimulating. What is important is that we share these emotions. Italians discovered America for the Americans; taught poetry, statesmanship, and the ruses of trade to the English; military art to the Germans; cuisine to the French; acting and ballet dancing to the Russians; music to everybody. If someday this world of ours should be turned into a cloud of radioactive dust in space, it will be by nuclear contrivances developed with the decisive aid of Italian scientists. {Luigi Barzini, in the Italians}.

Between 1880 and 1920, over four million Italians entered the United States. No other ethnic group has sent so many immigrants in such a short time. Before 1870 only scattered thousands of Italians had come to areas outside of Europe to either North or South America. Up to 1900, most Italians had emigrated to either Argentina or Brazil. Those entering the United States were primarily male, and many intended to return to Italy after making some money. However, many ended up staying in America for various reasons. {Oscar Handlin in The Uprooted].

The Italian Heritage Network

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Author Jerre Mangione's book {America is also Italian, narrated by Chef Walter Potenza.

Mr. Mangione became a professor in the English department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1961 and was named emeritus professor of American literature upon his retirement in 1978. Among the works he produced during his tenure were ''Passion for Sicilians: The World Around Danilo Dolci'' (1968) and ''An Ethnic at Large: Memoirs of America in the '30s and '40s'' (1978). Upon completing his last book, ''La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian-American Experience,'' which he wrote with Ben Morreale, Mr. Mangione was honored by the Library of Congress with an exhibition of his works and papers.

Honoring the memory of Jerre Mangione

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Author Jerre Mangione's book {America is also Italian} proudly narrated by Chef Walter Potenza.

Mr. Mangione became a professor in the English department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1961 and was named emeritus professor of American literature upon his retirement in 1978. Among the works he produced during his tenure were ''Passion for Sicilians: The World Around Danilo Dolci'' (1968) and ''An Ethnic at Large: Memoirs of America in the '30s and '40s'' (1978). Upon completing his last book, ''La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian-American Experience,'' which he wrote with Ben Morreale, Mr. Mangione was honored by the Library of Congress with an exhibition of his works and papers.

Note: the podcast intends to honor and glorify the memory of Jerre Mangione and the immense contributions he left behind!

The Italian Heritage Network

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Enjoy the third part of America is also Italian. Narrator, Walter Potenza

Mr. Mangione became a professor in the English department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1961 and was named emeritus professor of American literature upon his retirement in 1978. Among the works he produced during his tenure were ''Passion for Sicilians: The World Around Danilo Dolci'' (1968) and ''An Ethnic at Large: Memoirs of America in the '30s and '40s'' (1978). Upon completing his last book, ''La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian-American Experience,'' which he wrote with Ben Morreale, Mr. Mangione was honored by the Library of Congress with an exhibition of his works and papers.

The Italian Heritage Network

More podcasts by Chef Walter Potenza

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Author Jerre Mangione's book {America is also Italian} proudly narrated by Chef Walter Potenza.

Mr. Mangione became a professor in the English department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1961 and was named emeritus professor of American literature upon his retirement in 1978. Among the works he produced during his tenure were ''Passion for Sicilians: The World Around Danilo Dolci'' (1968) and ''An Ethnic at Large: Memoirs of America in the '30s and '40s'' (1978). Upon completing his last book, ''La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian-American Experience,'' which he wrote with Ben Morreale, Mr. Mangione was honored by the Library of Congress with an exhibition of his works and papers.

Note: The podcast intends to honor and glorify Jerre Mangione's memory and the immense contributions he left behind!

The Italian Heritage Network

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode explores the Immigrant's Early Arrivals

Throughout the colonial and early national periods, immigrants from the Italian peninsula maintained a small but well-established presence in the North American population. Italian craftsmen were renowned the world over, and many traveled to the New World to help build its new institutions, working as sculptors, woodworkers, and glassblowers. Thomas Jefferson had a particular affinity for Italian culture; he recruited Italian stonemasons to work on his home at Monticello, and brought musicians from Italy to form the core of the Marine Band. In addition, he invented his own hand-operated pasta machine, the designs for which are still in the Library's collections.

Italian immigration continued at a trickle throughout the middle of the 19th century. Although travelers from the peninsula continued to roam the world, most chose to settle in Argentina and Brazil. Between 1820 and 1870, fewer than 25,000 Italian immigrants came to the U.S., mostly from northern Italy. These early arrivals settled in communities all across the country, from the farm towns of New Jersey and the vineyards of California to the ports of San Francisco and New Orleans.

The impact of their contributions can still be seen today. The poet Lorenzo da Ponte built the first opera house in the U.S., became a professor of Italian at Columbia University, and almost single-handedly established Italian opera in the United States. The abolition movement received key support from the prominent Philadelphia rabbi Sabato Morais, who brought a fierce commitment to freedom and human rights from his native Tuscany. Starting in the mid-1850s, painter Constantino Brumidi spent decades creating the paintings and frescoes that adorn the U.S. Capitol, including the spectacular images on the building's great dome.

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This episode explores the Great Arrival

Most of this generation of Italian immigrants took their first steps on U.S. soil in a place that has now become a legend—Ellis Island. In the 1880s, they numbered 300,000; in the 1890s, 600,000; in the decade after that, more than two million. By 1920, when immigration began to taper off, more than 4 million Italians had come to the United States, and represented more than 10 percent of the nation's foreign-born population.

What brought about this dramatic surge in immigration? The causes are complex, and each hopeful individual or family no doubt had a unique story. By the late 19th century, the Italian peninsula had finally been brought under a single flag, but the land and its people were by no means unified. Decades of internal strife had left a legacy of violence, social chaos, and widespread poverty. The peasants in the primarily poor, mostly rural south of Italy and on the island of Sicily had little hope of improving their lot. Diseases and natural disasters swept through the new nation, but its fledgling government was in no condition to bring aid to the people. As transatlantic transportation became more affordable and as word of American prosperity spread through returning immigrants and U.S. recruiters, Italians found it increasingly difficult to resist the call of "L'America".

This new generation of Italian immigrants was distinctly different in makeup from those who had come before. The immigrant population no longer consisted mostly of Northern Italian artisans and shopkeepers seeking a new market in which to ply their trades. Instead, the vast majority were farmers and laborers looking for a steady source of work—any work. There was a significant number of single men among these immigrants, and many came only to stay a short time. Within five years, between 30 and 50 percent of this generation of immigrants would return home to Italy, where they were known as ritornati.

Those who stayed usually maintained close contact with their families in the old country and worked hard to earn money to send back home. In 1896, a government commission on Italian immigration estimated that Italian immigrants sent or took home between $4 million and $30 million each year, and that "the marked increase in the wealth of certain sections of Italy can be traced directly to the money earned in the United States."

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