For more than a century, Italian immigrants and their descendants contributed their labor and talent to building the city. Chicago Italians at Work focuses on a period from 1890 to 1970 when industry was king in this midwestern metropolis. Generations of Italians found work in companies such as U.S. Steel, Western Electric, Pullman, Crane, McCormick/Harvester, Hart Schaffner and Marx, and other large industrial corporations. Other Italians were self-employed as barbers, shoe workers, tailors, musicians, construction workers, and more. In many of these trades, Italians were predominant. A complex network of family enterprises also operated in the Chicago Italian community. Small shopkeepers generated work in food services and retail employment; some of these ma-and-pa operations grew into large, prosperous enterprises that survive today. Finally, Italians helped develop trade unions, which created long-term economic gains for all ethnic groups in Chicago. This book chronicles the labor and contributions of an urban ethnic community through historic photographs and text.

Outside of Italy, the country’s culture and its food appear to be essentially synonymous. And indeed, as The Italian Way makes clear, preparing, cooking, and eating food play a central role in the daily activities of Italians from all walks of life. In this beautifully illustrated book, Douglas Harper and Patrizia Faccioli present a fascinating and colorful look at the Italian table. The Italian Way focuses on two dozen families in the city of Bologna, elegantly weaving together Harper’s outsider perspective with Faccioli’s intimate knowledge of the local customs. The authors interview and observe these families as they go shopping for ingredients, cook together, and argue over who has to wash the dishes. Throughout, the authors elucidate the guiding principle of the Italian table—a delicate balance between the structure of tradition and the joy of improvisation. With its bite-sized history of food in Italy, including the five-hundred-year-old story of the country’s cookbooks, and Harper’s mouth-watering photographs, The Italian Way is a rich repast—insightful, informative, and inviting.

Author and history professor Dominic Candeloro presents an intriguing narrative record of the earliest beginning of the Italian communities in Chicago. The stories of Chicago's Italian communities are an important part of the rich and diverse mosaic of the city's history. As a rail center, an industrial center and America's fastest growing major city, Chicago offered opportunities for immigrants from all nations. Italians in Chicago explores the lives of 10 significant members of the Chicago Italian-American community going back to the 1850s. This book is a collaborative and cumulative effort, and gives glimpses and echoes of what occurred in the Italian-American past in Chicago. Including vintage images and tales of such individuals as Father Armando Pierini, Anthony Scariano, and Joe Bruno, and groups such as the Aragona Club and the Maria Santissima Lauretana Society, this collection uncovers the challenges and triumphs of these Italian immigrants.

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. Post-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. With the city's support, they are succeeding.

Morality is often imagined to be at odds with capitalism and its focus on the bottom line, but in The Moral Neoliberal morality is shown as the opposite: an indispensible tool for capitalist transformation. Set within the shifting landscape of neoliberal welfare reform in the Lombardy region of Italy, Andrea Muehlebach tracks the phenomenal rise of voluntarism in the wake of the state’s withdrawal of social service programs. Using anthropological tools, she shows how socialist volunteers are interpreting their unwaged labor as an expression of social solidarity, with Catholic volunteers thinking of theirs as an expression of charity and love. Such interpretations pave the way for a mass mobilization of an ethical citizenry that is put to work by the state. Visiting several sites across the region, from Milanese high schools to the offices of state social workers to the homes of the needy, Muehlebach mounts a powerful argument that the neoliberal state nurtures selflessness in order to cement some of its most controversial reforms. At the same time, she also shows how the insertion of such an anticapitalist narrative into the heart of neoliberalization can have unintended consequences.

"A classic."—New York Times "Seminal, epochal, path-breaking . . . a Democracy in America for our times."—The Nation From the bestselling author of Bowling Alone, a landmark account of the secret of successful democracies Why do some democratic governments succeed and others fail? In a book that has received attention from policymakers and civic activists in America and around the world, acclaimed political scientist and bestselling author Robert Putnam and his collaborators offer empirical evidence for the importance of "civic community" in developing successful institutions. Their focus is on a unique experiment begun in 1970, when Italy created new governments for each of its regions. After spending two decades analyzing the efficacy of these governments in such fields as agriculture, housing, and healthcare, they reveal patterns of associationism, trust, and cooperation that facilitate good governance and economic prosperity. The result is a landmark book filled with crucial insights about how to make democracy work.

All the information you could possibly need for your time in Italy, whether a week or a decade, in a completely updated and revised edition So, you want to move to Italy for six months but you don't speak the language well. How do you look for a job? Your heart is set on buying a farmhouse in Tuscany. What are the legal pitfalls to avoid? You'd like to study in Rome, but your college doesn't have a program. Which schools should you apply to? With all-new information on the Internet and on the effect of the conversion to the euro, this essential companion guide to Italy features - hundreds of addresses and Internet sites, from real estate agencies to job banks - details on visas, banking, taxes, and residency permits - freelance, seasonal, part-time, and full-time employment options - more than two hundred language schools, American colleges, and Italian universities Written by two seasoned expatriates, Living, Studying, and Working in Italy is packed with candid insider's tips and practical, up-to-date information for travelers of any age.