alfonso guerriero jr.

Recently my daughters have become fixated with Walt Disney’s 1967 animated movie The Jungle Book, starring Louis Prima. Now, before I continue, I need to explain that being a parent is unparalleled to any ebullient experience you will ever have …

Waves of Italian immigrants embarked on steamships during the late nineteenth century and arrived on the shores of America to escape from Italy’s natural disasters, political instability, famine and disease.  Many decided to leave their homeland and journey across the …

I met Gay Talese on a Friday afternoon in New York City, when the sun descends from its zenith and anxious pedestrians are walking briskly home to begin their weekend.  He had agreed to meet and talk about his Italian …

Old Italian barber shops in the United States are on the verge of extinction. For much of the 20th century, most big cities had many Italian barber shops. These barber shops and their trademark red, blue and white helical stripes …

Once it was evident that Benito Mussolini would solidify his political power in the 1920s, it was almost as if Ernest Hemingway declared a self-imposed exile with Italy and vowed never to return until Il Duce and his fascist cohorts …

Recently, while commuting to work in New York City and walking through another snow pile of slush and ice in temperatures not above twenty degrees Fahrenheit, I found myself daydreaming about the warm and tranquil summers I would spend in …

Aristotle once said, “Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.”  Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio are two political leaders on opposite sides of …

The American media and the government’s vacillating policies toward immigration over the past century have contributed to many like Gay Talese to question his cultural identity as an adolescent growing up in Ocean City, New Jersey during World War II. …

For the first time in New York City there is an exhibit celebrating the literary works of Ernest Hemingway. From September 25th through January 31st, 2016 at the Morgan Library and Museum, in collaboration with the John F. Kennedy Presidential …

Another mainstay of Italian culture has succumbed to the tentacles of realty developers in New York City.  De Robertis, an Italian pasticceria and café, for nearly 110 years, has closed permanently.  De Robertis Pastry Shoppe, where New York Yankee’s Shortstop, …