Reminiscences of life in the Italian neighborhoods of Brooklyn are accompanied by recipes for traditional dishes as prepared by the author's grandfather, a Sicilian master chef

This comprehensive title is among the first to extensively use newly released 2010 U.S. Census data to examine multiculturalism today and tomorrow in America. This distinction is important considering the following NPR report by Eyder Peralta: "Based on the first national numbers released by the Census Bureau, the AP reports that minorities account for 90 percent of the total U.S. growth since 2000, due to immigration and higher birth rates for Latinos." According to John Logan, a Brown University sociologist who has analyzed most of the census figures, "The futures of most metropolitan areas in the country are contingent on how attractive they are to Hispanic and Asian populations." Both non-Hispanic whites and blacks are getting older as a group. "These groups are tending to fade out," he added. Another demographer, William H. Frey with the Brookings Institution, told The Washington Post that this has been a pivotal decade. "We’re pivoting from a white-black-dominated American population to one that is multiracial and multicultural." Multicultural America: A Multimedia Encyclopedia explores this pivotal moment and its ramifications with more than 900 signed entries not just providing a compilation of specific ethnic groups and their histories but also covering the full spectrum of issues flowing from the increasingly multicultural canvas that is America today. Pedagogical elements include an introduction, a thematic reader’s guide, a chronology of multicultural milestones, a glossary, a resource guide to key books, journals, and Internet sites, and an appendix of 2010 U.S. Census Data. Finally, the electronic version will be the only reference work on this topic to augment written entries with multimedia for today’s students, with 100 videos (with transcripts) from Getty Images and Video Vault, the Agence France Press, and Sky News, as reviewed by the media librarian of the Rutgers University Libraries, working in concert with the title’s editors.

Vincent Schiavelli is known to most of us as a character actor who has appeared in such films as Ghost, Man on the Moon, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Schiavelli grew up in Brooklyn, speaking both Sicilian and English at home. Some of his earliest memories are of sitting at the kitchen table while his grandparents told stories of the life and the people they had left behind in Polizzi Generosa, a small city in the Madonie Mountains of Sicily. As Schiavelli grew older, those stories, and the city about which they were told, took on a mythic quality. When he was nearly forty he made his first trip there, and what he found was more extraordinary than the "once upon a time" fables of his childhood. In Many Beautiful Things, Schiavelli invites readers to join him in discovering the people, culture, and food of the city that has, in essence, become his second home. Equal parts memoir and cookbook, it is the best of both. Schiavelli is an accomplished and elegant writer who evokes a foreign and often closed culture from a unique perspective: an outsider fluent in the language with still-strong familial ties. The recipes -- which reflect the ancient influences of Greece, North Africa, and Spain -- are simple, rustic, and delicious, depending on local products and seasonal bounty. This is not your usual Southern Italian fare but a unique regional cuisine: Pumpkin Caponata, Ditali with Drowned Lettuce, Fried Ricotta Omelet, Potato Gratin with Bay Leaves, Almond Love Bites, Veal Shoulder Roasted with Marsala, and Baked Pasta with Almonds (rigatoni baked in a pork ragu with chopped toasted almonds) are just a few of the extraordinary dishes you'll find in this book, all of which can be reproduced by cooks with delectable results. Schiavelli provides a comprehensive list of mail-order sources. And if you want to visit Polizzi Generosa, there's a guide on how to get there, where to stay, and where to eat. Illustrated with black-and-white line drawings by Polizzi's best known artist, Santo Lipani (who also happens to be an extraordinary cook), Many Beautiful Things is a feast, both culinary and literary.

For many years the inhabitants of Olevano Sul Tusciano, an inland village in the province of Salerno, have replaced the expression “Do not think that I am rich”, with the sentence “Don’t think I am coming from Wilmington”. During the years of the Great Migration, a good many Olevanese left their village to emigrate to the United States, and chose Wilmington, a wealthy town in Delaware, as their favourite destination. Not far from Philadelphia, in the early years of 20th century, Wilmington cornered Italian low cost labor. Its Little Italy hosted unskilled laborers mainly from the South of Italy, poor but highly motivated by a strong desire of redemption. Many of them did succeed. This book was born from the collaboration and enthusiasm of their descendants, who still live in Wilmington, and of their relatives who live in Olevano. Its aim is to insert the migratory experience of their families into the wider context of the Diaspora of the Italians all over the world at the beginning of 20th century, and to make it the paradigm of some migratory phenomena which recur over and over again, the same as yesterday and today.

This second volume of New Italian Migrations to the United States explores the evolution of art and cultural expressions created by and about Italian immigrants and their descendants since 1945. The essays range from an Italian-language radio program that broadcast intimate messages from family members in Italy to the role of immigrant cookbook writers in crafting a fashionable Italian food culture. Other works look at how exoticized actresses like Sophia Loren and Pier Angeli helped shape a glamorous Italian style out of images of desperate postwar poverty; overlooked forms of brain drain; the connections between countries old and new in the works of Michigan self-taught artist Silvio Barile; and folk revival performer Alessandra Belloni's reinterpretation of tarantella dance and music for Italian American women. In the afterword, Anthony Julian Tamburri discusses the nomenclature ascribed to Italian American creative writers living in Italy and the United States. Contributors: John Allan Cicala, Simone Cinotto, Teresa Fiore, Incoronata (Nadia) Inserra, Laura E. Ruberto, Joseph Sciorra, and Anthony Julian Tamburri.

This is sausages with everything: all kinds of deliciously indulgent carbs, from pasta to panini and rice to beans. Myriad mashes and a selection of great gravies set the ball rolling; but the sausage is a far more versatile and sexy ingredient than this classic combo alone. This is the amazing sausage in all its forms - from humble banger to fiery Merguez, Cumberland ring to homemade pork-and-herb patties, puddings black and white. Partnering pak choi, couscous, Puy lentils; crowning pizza, rice and spaghetti, packing pies and giving punch to chilli. There's room also for a host of fun feast ideas, from sausage croissants and mini toad-in-the-holes to hot dogs, kebabs and honey-glazed sausages on sticks, and a range of great sauces, salsas and accompaniments. Sumptuous photography from Glenfiddich-award-winning photographer Georgia Glynn-Smith, with more than 30 fantastic, full-colour photographed dishes to complement this fantastic range of sausage-centred recipes.

According to the author, an extra measure of loyalty and patriotism was required of Italian immigrants because the country of their birth was a declared enemy of their adopted country. This is the story of their quest for acceptance.