In Building Little Italy, Richard Juliani has given us the definitive case study of Italian community formation in the United States. No other scholar has so exhaustively researched, so skillfully written about, or so imaginatively conceived the question of early Italian settlement before the age of mass migration. It will remain the essential guide for all future work in the field.”
—Philip V. Cannistraro,Queens College/CUNY
“In this useful study, Richard Juliani builds on the methods and insights of thirty years of research on Italian American life during the mass migrations, but charts a new course by examining the years before 1870.”
—Donna R. Gabaccia Journal of Social History
“Juliani’s work is a richly detailed study of one of the earliest Italian communities in the United States. There are many community studies of Italians, but there are few that have examined, in such depth, the creation of Italian life before the era of mass migration.”
—Diane C. Vecchio Journal of American Ethnic History
“In Building Little Italy, Richard N. Juliani has undertaken an enormous task and filled a major void in our appreciation of the role that Italians played in early American history.”
—Salvatore J. LaGumina Journal of American History
“Juliani’s important scholarship has filled a gap in the way we conceive of immigrant community building in America.”
—Robert M. Zecker Labor History
“Juliani has produced a work of remarkable scholarship. Building Little Italy, not only fills a gap in the growing literature on the Italian-American experience but will also serve as the standard reference for further research in the field.”
—Stefano Luconi American Studies
“All constraints aside, however, Juliani has provided us with important insights into the life circumstances early Italian settlers encountered in Philadelphia, their efforts to establish an Italian community for themselves, and their children, and the many contributions they made to the development of the city itself.”
—Sam Migliore Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association
“Building Little Italy is an insightful and compelling account of the creation and dynamic development of Philadelphia’s Italian community. Richard Juliani has provided a model of how ethnic history should be written.”
—Spencer Di Scala,University of Massachusetts at Boston
“Building Little Italy clearly shows that Italians exerted a much greater influence on the city than has been supposed and provides a rare opportunity to witness the origins of an ethnic community. By presenting a meticulously detailed profile of the Italian immigrant experience through its stages of development, the book captures—in words and pictures—a piece of local history that has been long ignored.”
—Pennsylvania Heritage
“Immigration scholars will appreciate this effort to depict and analyze the the often overlooked pre-mass migration period. Those with a more general interest in either Philadelphia history or Italian immigrants will find the book both interesting and enjoyable.”
—R. F. Ziedel CHOICE
“Building Little Italy is a serious work of scholarship that sheds considerable light on areas of history and population study where previously there were but shadows.”
—Albert DiBartolomeo Philadelphia Inquirer
“Rarely have historians of a major immigrant group invested as much effort in tracing the early pioneers as has Juliani in this work. Juliani has sympathetically reconstructed the initial stages of immigrant community formation and imaginatively drawn from a wide range of sources. He provides new insight into the process of how a discrete group of individuals formed social networks and worked to create the base for Philadelphia’s large Italian American community.”
—Roger D. Simon H-Urban
“Juliani’s study provides the seeds for countless stories that can take us away from the earlier images of Little Italy given to us by others. Building Little Italy is definitely a benchmark study in terms of methodology and context provided, if not in style.”
—Fred L. Gardaphe Fra Noi
“This book will interest anyone concerned with Italians in the United States and, more generally, students of immigration.”
—Richard D. Alba Contemporary Sociology
“Building Little Italy is clearly the culmination of countless hours, indeed years, of spadework into nineteenth-century sources required to construct such a thorough profile of community life.”
—Peter R. D’Agostino Italian American Review