by Stephen Puleo.

Beacon Press. 309 pages. $26.95.

BY TONY LEWIS
Special to the Journal

Most of the country associates Boston with Pilgrims, Brahmins, and the Irish, a curious mix, to be sure, but one that omits that other huge element in the Hub’s tasty demographic stew — the Italians.

Southern Italy’s endemic poverty, its quasi-feudal economics, high taxes, and natural disasters (the eruptions of Vesuvius and Etna killed more than 110,000 people in the first decade of the 20th century), forced droves of people across the Atlantic, in steerage, for a crack at a better life in one of America’s bigger cities. More than 4 million Italians came to the United States between 1880 and 1920; by 1913, Italian immigrants made up more than 10 percent of Boston’s population.

Stephen Puleo’s The Boston Italians details this fascinating history, but in the context of the Italian experience in America in general. We see, for example, how discrimination, assimilation, the Depression and two world wars affected Italians nationally, but spend most of our time in an up-close look at Massachusetts and Boston’s North End in particular. Along the way, Puleo tells the story of his own family’s experiences, too, thus making the story personal and affecting.

One of the ironies of Italian life in Boston is that the North End is where Boston itself began, on that little knob of land where Colonial Gov. Thomas Hutchinson and patriot Paul Revere lived, and consequently has always meant a great deal to Yankee Boston. And this in spite of the fact that by 1880, after successive waves of Irish, Germans and Jews, Puleo writes, it “had become Boston’s first slum neighborhood.” It was into this cramped breeding ground of disease and unemployment that his ancestors and thousands of others came.

The Boston Italians is a thorough, readable and detailed recapitulation of the Italian experience in America and Boston. We see, as if in time-lapse photography, how Italians settled in, found work, married and were schooled. We also see how they learned to defend themselves from prejudice and to fight against pernicious stereotypes.

Puleo writes very little about the Mafia’s impact on Boston, but manages to touch all the other bases, and a few that most readers might never have considered. He puts the Sacco and Vanzetti trial into its anarchist context, describes “the visceral resentment, and blatant and brutal discrimination” aimed at Italians (who were “lynched more frequently in America than any other group except African Americans”).

Many of the things Puleo has to say he illustrates through the lives of two prominent members of the North End community, George Scigliano, who became a member of the Massachusetts legislature in 1903, and his friend James Donnaruma, publisher and editor of La Gazzetta del Massachusetts. Through their tireless efforts, we see, step by step, how the community developed and became thoroughly assimilated Americans. Why it took until 1993 for Boston to elect its first Italian-American mayor, however, Puleo doesn’t say, except between the lines.