The moment you’ve all been waiting for is finally here! Part Three of the Power Hour’s Four-Part History of the Italian American Experience has arrived.  This week, our entire team reassembles for a boisterous meal at one of our favorite Italian American restaurants to bring you ‘Americans of Italian Descent: 1941 – Present’.

We will dig into the latest chapter in the Italian American story with topics ranging from our community’s role in the Second World War to the era of Sinatra the entertainer and Sinatra the community leader, through the founding of our earliest national institutions and into the 80’s and 90’s and the decades of the Italian Americans.  The incredible historical episodes are interspersed with our own personal anecdotes and recollections in what is definitely a must download part of our impassioned look into our history.

Tweetables:

• “This chapter in our history is the beginning of the community we know today.” – John Viola
• “It starts with this idea that we are at war with Italy and it’s sort of a ‘put your flag in the ground and decide who you are’ moment.” – John Viola
• “This is a fracture in the Italian American story where we go from being an immigrant group and group on the fringe to having to declare who we are and what we’re about.” – John Viola
• “Your adopted country is at war with your home country.” – Dolores Alfieri Taranto
• “The largest percentage of the American fighting force that goes overseas to fight is Italian American, so once again like WWI we are disproportionately represented.” – John Viola
• “This is where we go from Italian immigrants to Italian Americans.” -John Viola
• “Within America, it became an Italian melting pot at that time which didn’t even exist in Italy.” – Patrick O’Boyle
• “The Italian and Italian American family values that we know and idealize are all very different; we’re all just people at the end of the day.” – Rossella Rago
• “Frank Sinatra was a gateway to a larger community.” – Patrick O’Boyle
• “We become a little more American, but America becomes a little more Italian.” – John Viola
• “We’re our own worst enemies because we hate these [stereotypical] depictions, but at the same time we find them funny because they are familiar…” – Dolores Alfieri Taranto
• “We start to see real awareness that we’re evolving as an ethnic group, but we’re not forming the organs of community that are going to make us a strong one.” – John Viola
• “I think you have to have a good understanding of what history was like for the Southern Italian and Italian American at the time to sympathize with their choices.” – Rossella Rago in reference to The Godfather
• “The key that holds us together is family.” – Patrick O’Boyle

Books/Resources:

• IAP 74: POWER HOUR: A Power Hour History of the Italian American Experience Part 1 of 4: Before We Were Italians: 1492 – 1890
• IAP 75: POWER HOUR: A Power Hour History of the Italian American Experience Part 2 of 4: Italians in America 1890 – 1941
• IAP 15: Gay Talese on growing up Italian American in Mid-20^th Century America. Part 1 of 2
• IAP 16: Gay Talese on showing up as a journalist. Part 2 of 2
• IAP 10: Tom Santopietro on “The Godfather” trilogy and the effect it had on Italian Americans, including himself
• The Godfather Effect: Changing Hollywood, America, and Me by Tom Santopietro
• The Italian Americans DVD
• The Italian Americans by Maria Laurino
• Mario Cuomo 1984 Democratic National Convention Keynote Speech
• The Ambassador Peter F. Secchia Voyage of Discovery Program by the National Italian American Foundation
• Frost Restaurant
• Risorgimento: The Red, White, and Greening of New York [1971] by Nicholas Pileggi