As part of last week’s budget bill compromise, Congress promised to discuss immigration legislation. If history is any guide, that’s nothing to celebrate. The history of immigration legislation in this country is all about keeping people out. A century ago … Continue reading →
The black-and-white photo below pictures a moment in the round-up of immigrants in America 100 years ago. The suspicious ‘outsiders’ are white-skinned people from southern and eastern Europe — Italians, Jews, Poles, Russians, Greeks, Serbs, Ukrainians, Lithuanians. The mass round-up … Continue reading →
If you wanted to build a wall a hundred years ago, it would have had to be on the Atlantic. I’ll be speaking on my novel “Suosso’s Lane” at Duxbury Library on Sunday, Jan. 29, 2 p.m., my first opportunity … Continue reading →
It’s a New Year. I hope 2017 is not the year in which we say goodbye to the two century-plus long experiment in American democracy. Or, equally as worrying, the beginning of a political breakdown that will lead to social … Continue reading →
My thanks to Pilgrim Hall, to all the folks who turned out for my ‘speak and read’ on “Suosso’s Lane” last night, and to director Donna Curtin who gave me a spot in the museum’s busy fall program schedule. Once … Continue reading →
“Suosso’s Lane,” a book named after a street in North Plymouth, has some considerable history in West Bridgewater. The prosecution theory, to use the word loosely, of how Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco were involved in the robbery of the shoe … Continue reading →
Do we learn from the past? Can we? Monday evening, Oct. 17, I’ll be speaking on “Suosso’s Lane” at The James Library and Center for the Arts, 24 West St., Norwell, Mass. The time is 7 p.m.; it’s free. With … Continue reading →
I will be bringing copies of “Suosso’s Lane” to the Milton Public Library on Sunday, Oct. 16, to take part in a new book program called “Fall Into Reading: Meet Local Authors.” The participating authors will have an opportunity to … Continue reading →
Boston’s North End, an Italian-American neighborhood for a hundred years, was hopping on a Tuesday evening last week. The neighborhood’s new book store, I AM, hosted a program that included long-suppressed film footage of the Sacco-Vanzetti funeral march, a reading … Continue reading →
I’ll be speaking on my novel “Suosso’s Lane” at the I AM bookstore, 189 North St., just off Revere Square in the North End of Boston, on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 7 p.m. A new store, I AM describes itself as … Continue reading →