The incidents described in this book include the 1890 assassination of the New Orleans Chief of Police David Hennessey, the resulting Italian lynchings, and the 1906 murder of the seven-year-old child Walter Lamana. The first two incidents were the impetus for the 1999 HBO movie "Vendetta" and the book The Crescent City Lynchings by Tom Smith. The third incident had the most impact on many of the families documented in this book. The Walter Lamana child-killing story has not resurfaced for over a hundred years, until now.The high profile crimes of the late 1800s and early 1900s typically do not mention the places of origin of the families involved. The majority of those involved came from a small town in Sicily named Chiusa Sclafani, which is near Corleone, situated in the province of Palermo. Chiusa Sclafani is not mentioned in the movie Vendetta, nor the books covering the incidents and families involved.Fifteen years and roughly 60,000 hours of research are included in this book. This is one of most uniquely written books seen in centuries, and embodies a far-reaching and massive amount of documentation.For the most part this book is a reference material. Included are details of ancestor voyages, accounts of major incidents, the impacts those incidents had on these families, and more. There are steamer ship voyages documented for 27 families and for 795 individuals. There are 32 family trees presented. The Index includes 731 unique surnames and 2948 individuals documented in the family trees presented.The early chapters of this book describe the experience of the voyage and American citizenship process for our Sicilian immigrant ancestors, the "incidents" which occurred in New Orleans which caused the massive family dispersions, as well as a short description of Chiusa Sclafani and New Orleans.The middle chapters contain the steamer ship voyages for many of those who left the island of Sicily and entered America. This is the main artery of this book, which connects the present to the past and vice-versa. This chapter will help many people in their research by "jumping the ocean", a peculiar and meaningful genealogy term.The latter chapters of this book include the family descendant trees, which span from the earliest ancestors researched in Sicily, to the present. The first page (sometimes more than one page) of most of the family chapters includes a short dialogue explaining the familys entrance to America, detailing who migrated from Sicily to America, migrations from New Orleans to other places, many surname spelling changes, and more.Because the original research focused on the authors own family, the Palisi family documentation includes 400 years and 12 complete generations. Further, the Palisi chapter contains a heraldry entry found in a document dated from the 1500s, placenames around the globe where the name Palisi is used, and genetic DNA testing results of the Palisi line. Frank Palisi chose to include his own familys genetic DNA testing and results in this book since he was inspired by National Geographics (and their partner IBM) efforts to genetically test the DNA of a sampling of the worlds population to determine how the earth was repopulated after the last Ice Age.As a result of this book, first, second, and third cousins can now find out who and where their relatives are, after being separated over a hundred years ago.This book has attracted and will continue to attract historians, genealogists, mafia enthusiasts, university professors & students, and more!

Approached as a wellspring of cultural authenticity and historical exceptionality, New Orleans appears in opposition to a nation perpetually driven by progress. Remaking New Orleans shows how this narrative is rooted in a romantic cultural tradition, continuously repackaged through the twin engines of tourism and economic development, and supported by research that has isolated the city from comparison and left unquestioned its entrenched inequality. Working against this feedback loop, the contributors place New Orleans at the forefront of national patterns of urban planning, place-branding, structural inequality, and racialization. Nontraditional sites like professional wrestling matches, middle-class black suburbs, and Vietnamese gardens take precedence over clichéd renderings of Creole cuisine, voodoo queens, and hot jazz. Covering the city's founding through its present and highlighting changing political and social formations, this volume remakes New Orleans as a rich site for understanding the quintessential concerns of American cities. Contributors. Thomas Jessen Adams, Vincanne Adams, Vern Baxter, Maria Celeste Casati Allegretti, Shannon Lee Dawdy, Rien Fertel, Megan French-Marcelin, Cedric G. Johnson, Alecia P. Long, Vicki Mayer, Toby Miller, Sue Mobley, Marguerite Nguyen, Aaron Nyerges, Adolph Reed Jr., Helen A. Regis, Matt Sakakeeny, Heidi Schmalbach, Felipe Smith, Bryan Wagner

"Innovative and highly engaging... an inspiring example of what can be done to bring the past to life in all its weirdness and complexity." —The Wall Street Journal “This work is a trifecta - the perfect book for fans of the Red Dead Redemption series, Westerns and history alike. It is a privilege and a joy to be trusted with Tore Olsson’s words and to see audiences gain new academic insight into the creation of this iconic series.” —Roger Clark, actor of Arthur Morgan, Red Dead Redemption 2 Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II, set in 1911 and 1899, are the most-played American history video games since The Oregon Trail. Beloved by millions, they’ve been widely acclaimed for their realism and attention to detail. But how do they fare as re-creations of history? In this engaging book, award-winning American history professor Tore Olsson takes up that question and more. Weaving the games’ plots and characters into an exploration of American violence between 1870 and 1920, Olsson shows that it was more often disputes over capitalism and race, not just poker games and bank robberies, that fueled the bloodshed of these turbulent years. As such, this era has much to teach us today. From the West to the Deep South to Appalachia, Olsson reveals the gritty and brutal world that inspired the games, but sometimes lacks context and complexity on the digital screen. Colorful, fast-paced, and dramatic, Red Dead’s History sheds light on dark corners of the American past for gamers and history buffs alike.

In Creole Italian, Justin A. Nystrom explores the influence Sicilian immigrants have had on New Orleans foodways. His culinary journey follows these immigrants from their first impressions on Louisiana food culture in the mid-1830s and along their path until the 1970s. Each chapter touches on events that involved Sicilian immigrants and the relevancy of their lives and impact on New Orleans. Sicilian immigrants cut sugarcane, sold groceries, ran truck farms, operated bars and restaurants, and manufactured pasta. Citing these cultural confluences, Nystrom posits that the significance of Sicilian influence on New Orleans foodways traditionally has been undervalued and instead should be included, along with African, French, and Spanish cuisine, in the broad definition of "creole." Creole Italian chronicles how the business of food, broadly conceived, dictated the reasoning, means, and outcomes for a large portion of the nearly forty thousand Sicilian immigrants who entered America through the port of New Orleans in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and how their actions and those of their descendants helped shape the food town we know today.

In 2015, the beautiful jazz funeral in New Orleans for composer Allen Toussaint coincided with a debate over removing four Confederate monuments. Mayor Mitch Landrieu led the ceremony, attended by living legends of jazz, music aficionados, politicians, and everyday people. The scene captured the history and culture of the city in microcosm--a city legendary for its noisy, complicated, tradition-rich splendor. In City of a Million Dreams, Jason Berry delivers a character-driven history of New Orleans at its tricentennial. Chronicling cycles of invention, struggle, death, and rebirth, Berry reveals the city's survival as a triumph of diversity, its map-of-the-world neighborhoods marked by resilience despite hurricanes, epidemics, fires, and floods. Berry orchestrates a parade of vibrant personalities, from the founder Bienville, a warrior emblazoned with snake tattoos; to Governor William C. C. Claiborne, General Andrew Jackson, and Pere Antoine, an influential priest and secret agent of the Inquisition; Sister Gertrude Morgan, a street evangelist and visionary artist of the 1960s; and Michael White, the famous clarinetist who remade his life after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina. The textured profiles of this extraordinary cast furnish a dramatic narrative of the beloved city, famous the world over for mysterious rituals as people dance when they bury their dead.

Global Jazz: A Research and Information Guide is an annotated bibliography that explores the global impact of jazz, detailing the evolution of the African American musical tradition as it has been absorbed, transformed, and expanded across the world’s historical, political, and social landscapes. With more than 1,300 annotated entries, this vast compilation covers a broad range of subjects, people, and geographic regions as they relate to interdisciplinary research in jazz studies. The result is a vivid demonstration of how cultures from every corner of the globe have situated jazz—often regarded as America’s classical music—within and beyond their own musical traditions, creating new artistic forms in the process. Global Jazz: A Research and Information Guide presents jazz as a common musical language in a global landscape of diverse artistic expression.

The critical role of Europe in the music, personalities, and analysis of jazz