"The Italian American Experience in New Haven: Images and Oral Histories", is now available. SUNY Press - July 2006.

For nearly a decade, Anthony has lovingly collected the stories and photographs of New Haven's first- and second- generation Italian immigrants.

Viewed together in a wonderful presentation, their words and images recollect the hardworking simplicity of turn-of-the-century New Haven; in classrooms, in sweat shops, and on farms, at festivals, feasts, and markets, with garment work, the Depression, and eventual urban renewal, this book captures a way of life that has all but vanished from America.

"The Italian American Experience in New Haven: Images and Oral Histories" is a hardcover book with over 450 pages, illustrated with 100 black and white photographs.

Eagerly anticipated by New Haven's Italian community "The Italian American Experience in New Haven: Images and Oral Histories" will be celebrated at a variety of local venues during the coming months. 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) ***** "A brilliantly written and highly recommended work that is as entertaining as it is informative." August 7, 2006.

"The Italian American Experience In New Haven: Images And Oral Histories", by Anthony Riccio (Stacks Manager at the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University) draws upon personal interviews as well as family and archival photographs to present a richly complex and fully realized history of the life and experiences of Italian immigrants who settled in New Haven, Connecticut in the 19th and 20th centuries."

"Not only is the daily pulse of life in the Italian-American community revealed in the life stories of ordinary men and women, the reader will discover how this immigrant community was affected by such landmark events as the Spanish Flu pandemic, the Great Depression, and World War II."

"Also revealed are the hardships of Italian immigrant women who labored under terrible (and often hazardous) conditions in New Haven's shirt factories. The integrations of historic photographs with the reported interviews transform The Italian American Experience In New Haven from just another ethnic American history into a compelling social history showcasing a vibrant, vigorous, colorful community. The result is a brilliantly written and highly recommended work that is as entertaining as it is informative."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR   Anthony Riccio grew up in an old ethnic neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut, where the constant hum of the local American Steel and Wire mill could be heard in the well-tended backyards of Italian immigrants.

He returned to the ancestral villages of his grandparents while pursuing an M.A. from Syracuse University in Florence, Italy and photgraphed daily life in the rural villages of the south. Anthony later became the director of the North End Senior Citizen Center in Boston, where he conducted oral-history interviews and photgraphed elderly Italian Americans of the North End neighborhood, and wrote his first publication: "Boston's North End: Images and Recollections of an Italian-American Neighborhood" Anthony lives in Westbrook, Connecticut.