Customer Reviews

The Humble and the Heroic: Wartime Italian Americans

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Salvatore LaGumina, THE HUMBLE AND THE HEROIC: WARTIME ITALIAN AMERICANS (Youngstown, NY: Cambria Press, 2006

This is a very personal book and I will respond to it personally. Salvatore LaGumina has written a history of Italian-American responses to developments before, during, and after World War II. He explains the nationalist feelings that created some initial positive responses to Fascism, traces the struggle over fascism within the community, and analyzes the complex reactions of the community as Italy allied with Germany. Much of the book describes the impressive heroism of Italian-Americans at home and overseas even while Italy was an enemy... LaGumina eloquently tells the heroic stories of Italian-Americans in all walks of life at home and in all branches of the service overseas. A major contribution of the book is the clear way it describes the Italian shift from enemy to "co-belligerent," "associated, power," and then liberated country. These were complex times for Italian-Americans but they came through it well and contributed greatly to winning the war and to Italian relief and rebuilding. This book should strengthen the pride of all Italian Americans.

The book will be of intense interest also to those of us from different ethnic heritages. LaGumina occasionally writes this book as a memoir as well as a history. He tells how his family and neighbors in Italian Brooklyn responded to the war, and this is where the book became personal for me. I am one year younger than LaGumina, and I recall many of the wartime events he discusses--but from the standpoint of a New England small-town Protestant. LaGumina gave me a lesson in empathy as he nudged me to think back for the first time to the Pollinis and Paoluccis in my school and to wonder how their families had dealt with all the complexities of World War II. I highly recommend THE HUMBLE AND THE HEROIC to readers from all ethnic backgrounds. The book can help all of us to re-live an important period of American history from a broadened, humane perspective.

I would recommend this book highly to anyone who wants to know more about the feats of Americans in WWII. This is a little known chapter in American History, Military History, and Italian-American History.