IMMIGRANT'S RETURN

This is an autobiography of an Italian immigrant, who came to America with his family in 1913- at the age of nine. The book is divided into two major sections; the first covering the period from his birth in a small Italian village to the end of his university education in America; the second, his return visit to Italy on a Guggenheim in 1949. The subject of the proposed book was to have been the Italian immigrant in America. Instead, the author makes a point of having changed his subject, after his return visit, to his own appraisal of America- using his native land as a yardstick against which he measures the virtues of America. These are primarily equalitarianismocially, freedom- politically, educational opportunities and an advanced standard of living. For on his visit in 1949 to Italy he found a lack of respect for human dignity, poverty, commercialism, political collusion, cynicism, servility. His evaluation is a valid one, but the handling is often awkward, in the transference from first to third person, from subjective to objective reactions. A social study, which is necessarily limited in its market.