The migration of Italians to the area began in 1864 with Raffaele Bracaccini, who was attracted by the beauty of Lake Erie and the countryside. By 1938, Erie's 18,000 Italians comprised the third largest ethnic group. Erie had its own Italian language newspaper from 1915 to 1940. St. Paul's Church was built with the contributions of Italian immigrants. Columbus School, Columbus Park, and Rose Memorial Hospital were established. Societies and businesses flourished. This book contains more than 200 photographs collected from local families representing the collective memory and history of Erie's Italian community from the 1860s to the 1950s.

The entire Italian American experience—from America's earliest days through the present—is now available in a single volume. This wide-ranging work relates the entire saga of the Italian-American experience from immigration through assimilation to achievement. The book highlights the enormous contributions that Italian Americans—the fourth largest European ethnic group in the United States—have made to the professions, politics, academy, arts, and popular culture of America. Going beyond familiar names and stories, it also captures the essence of everyday life for Italian Americans as they established communities and interacted with other ethnic groups. In this single volume, readers will be able to explore why Italians came to America, where they settled, and how their distinctive identity was formed. A diverse array of entries that highlight the breadth of this experience, as well as the multitude of ways in which Italian Americans have influenced U.S. history and culture, are presented in five thematic sections. Featured primary documents range from a 1493 letter from Christopher Columbus announcing his discovery to excerpts from President Barack Obama's 2011 speech to the National Italian American Foundation. Readers will come away from this book with a broader understanding of and greater appreciation for Italian Americans' contributions to the United States.

Between 1890 and 1924, Italian immigrants flocked to Ohio's Mahoning Valley. The area's burgeoning iron and steel industries beckoned with job prospects for immigrants fleeing southern and eastern Europe--particularly from southern Italy, a region that at the time lacked opportunity and highly taxed its natives. Upon the arrival of these new residents, neighborhoods such as Youngstown's Smoky Hollow and Brier Hill offered accepting communities, and Niles Fire Brick Factory Company and Trumbull Blast Furnace provided employment. Assimilation was not always easy, and discrimination did occur, but Italian Americans ultimately prospered, making a mark not only as steelworkers but also as shopkeepers, grocers, restaurateurs, tradesmen, educators, doctors, lawyers, legislators, and mayors. This book explores the immigration experience, community, workplace dynamics, celebrations, worship, heritage, and lasting impact of the second-largest ethnic group in Ohio's Mahoning Valley.

By 1933, the Pennsylvania Railroad had been in existence for nearly ninety years. During this time, it had grown from a small line, struggling to build west from the state capital in Harrisburg, to the dominant transportation company in the United States. In Volume 2 of The Pennsylvania Railroad, Albert J. Churella continues his history of this giant of American transportation. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Pennsylvania Railroad was the world's largest business corporation and the nation's most important railroad. By 1917, the Pennsylvania Railroad, like the nation itself, was confronting a very different world. The war that had consumed Europe since 1914 was about to engulf the United States. Amid unprecedented demand for transportation, the federal government undertook the management of the railroads, while new labor policies and new regulatory initiatives, coupled with a postwar recession, would challenge the company like never before. Only time would tell whether the years that followed would signal a new beginning for the Pennsylvania Railroad or the beginning of the end. The Pennsylvania Railroad: The Age of Limits, 1917-1933, represents an unparalleled look at the history, the personalities, and the technologies of this iconic American company in a period that marked the shift from building an empire to exploring the limits of their power.

At the beginning of the last century, there were just over 11,000 Italians in Ohio. While many of the earliest immigrants settled along Lake Erie, a growing number ventured south to the state capital, a city located at the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy Rivers and named for a famed Italian explorer. Importing the rich traditions of the old country, Columbus Italian families stayed close to each other, living in great concentrations on St. Clair Avenue and in the Flytown and Bottoms neighborhoods, Grandview Heights, Marble Cliff, and San Margherita. The generations of families who once called these Italian enclaves home have now largely dispersed but still form a community--colorful, hardworking, and fiercely loyal--bonded by the three most basic principles of Italian culture and the theme of the Columbus Italian Festival: "Faith, Family, and Friends."

All the classics in lighter versions made with the freshest of ingredients.