Finding America: A Photo Book of Italian Immigration to the U.S.
Newly arrived immigrants are examined for health diseases at Ellis Island. This is the dreaded eye exam.
An Italian family disembarks from the steamer leaving immigrants at Ellis Island.
Monday laundry in New York in the early years of the 20th century, when there were hundreds of thousands of Italians who arrived every year to the United States. In 1920, there were more than 1,600,000 residents of the United States born in Italy.
A group of Italian-Americans observe the raising of the flag during the Festa di San Rocco.
Market day on Mulberry Street in New York with stalls and people slowing the city traffic.
Sculptors and stonemasons during the construction of the Jefferson Building, a historic building of the Library of Congress (1891-1893). Many Italian artisans contributed to the construction of the Library of Congress - they were mainly from Tuscany.
In Tontitown, Arkansas, founded by Father Pietro Bandini in 1898, harvest is celebrated with a traditional spaghetti dinner (spaghettata) during the Grape Festival (1941).
An Italian woman, mother of two soldiers fighting the war in Europe, sews an American flag in the community of Verona in New Jersey.
The staff of the Teatro dei Pupi in New York, circa 1910.
Baseball player Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe in Canada. Despite his bright career in sports, the Italian press began to pay attention to DiMaggio only when it was announced his engagement to Marilyn.
Singer Frank Sinatra with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., members of what was known as the Rat Pack, a group of actors, singers and performers.
A too often forgotten hero: the fight against the stereotype of Italian Americans as all connected to the mafia was carried out by New York detective Joseph Petrosino. Here, his funerals.
“Trovare l’America” (Finding America) is a photo book that chronicles the lives of Italian immigrants to the U.S.: 500 images collected and selected by the Library of Congress in Washington to tell the epic story of Italians in the United States, available to the public for the first time.
From the crowded houses of the Lower East Side of Manhattan to the coal mines of Arkansas to the success achieved by Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio among others: there are both unknown and famous men and women among the many faces that make up the stories of Italian immigration evoked by the book.
The volume, edited by Linda Barrett Osborne and Paul Battaglia, has a preface signed by Italian-American director Martin Scorsese. He recalls his childhood in Little Italy, writing: "When the first waves of immigrants arrived from Italy, they rebuilt the world they knew. They created a place that was called Little Italy, which had all the beauty and warmth, all the pain and internal tensions of the country they had abandoned."
