Cinquant'anni di vita italiana in America [Fifty Years of Italian Life in America]. New York: Bagnasco Press, 1921.

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Title

Cinquant'anni di vita italiana in America [Fifty Years of Italian Life in America]. New York: Bagnasco Press, 1921.

Description

Inscribed by the author, see photo, to Luigi Barzini [Sr.], February, 1922. Alfredo Bosi’s 1921 Cinquant’anni di vita italiana in America claims itself to be the first history of Italians in the United States. (There are perhaps other candidates.) Journalist Bosi says its genesis was a conversation between him and visiting King Vittorio Emanuele of Italy, who in 1901 expressed curiosity about the Italian colony in America.

As I note above, this copy (see the other also in the Collection) was inscribed in 1922 to Luigi Barzini, the great Italian journalist and founder of the U.S.-based Corriere d’America (The American Courier), "in homage of the author [and] fervid admiration."

Bosi’s work encompasses a broad sociological and historical review of the Italian experience in America up to this time, and remains an invaluable reference work. Reflecting on both good and bad aspects of the culture, the text includes chapters on illiteracy, L’analfabetismo: La gran piaga d’Italia (Illiteracy: The great curse of Italy), as well as on lynching, Il linciaggio: La gran piaga d’America (Lynching: The great curse of America). On the latter, he counted 3,224 lynchings over a period from 1888 to 1918, including the famous 1891 New Orleans lynching of 11 Italians, which became an international cause célèbre.

Bosi also discusses American legislation to stop the inflow of Italians as “undesirable immigrants,” while at the same time he writes of Italian Americans enjoying their successes in the dramatic and pictorial arts, in commerce and industry, and in Italian journalism in America.

Creator

Alfredo Bosi

Publisher

Bagnasco Press

Date

1921

Format

22 x 16cm; 424 p.

Language

Italian

Citation

Alfredo Bosi, “Cinquant'anni di vita italiana in America [Fifty Years of Italian Life in America]. New York: Bagnasco Press, 1921.,” Italian-Language American Imprints: The Periconi Collection, accessed March 29, 2024, https://italianamericanimprints.omeka.net/items/show/17.

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