According to the author, an extra measure of loyalty and patriotism was required of Italian immigrants because the country of their birth was a declared enemy of their adopted country. This is the story of their quest for acceptance.

In America the streets were paved with gold. That was the mistaken notion of many an immigrant to the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s. On Long Island, deluded sojourners from Italy were to find that in fact there were few streets and that they themselves were to be the ones to build them.
Covering more than a century of history, Long Island Italians depicts the transition of urban Italians as they moved increasingly from the city to the suburbs in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. They were attracted to Long Island by economic opportunity, the availability of arable land, home...

"Avoiding the sometimes sterile and by now often futile debate concerning stereotypes, Hollywood's Italians is instead an act of loving archeology: digging in the past and assembling a colorful kaleidoscopic mosaic of tesserae. It is a pointillist portrait of a collective community. Each chapter is devoted to a theme, be it Italians who made their way to Hollywood, the transition from stage to screen, the symbiotic interaction between television and film, music on the screen, food and family, and peopled with dozens of mini-biographies that reveal often surprising bits of information. The...