The Lost World of Italian American Radicalism

Philip Cannistraro, Queens College, and Gerald Meyer, Hostos Community College

Radicalism has had a powerful but largely unacknowledged influence in the Italian American community. The Lost World of Italian American Radicalism: Politics, Labor, and Culture, published by Praeger (2003), brings together 16 selections that restore to Italian American history the radical experience that has long remained suppressed, but that nevertheless helped shape both the Italian American community and the American left.  The authors will discuss the significance of this work, as well as the contemporary significance of Italian American radicalism.