As controversy and debate rage over the statue of Columbus in NYC and the fate of Columbus Day generally, today might be a good moment for Italian Americans (and others) to ponder the dilemmas and paradoxes of Italian American history. In co-editing a new book, we have come to see Columbus as a prism through which much of Italian American history is refracted and often times distorted.

If, in 1917, someone would have made the daring prediction that not one but two Italian Americans would one day sit on the Supreme Court, they would have been derided as delusional.