Discussion about Boston's Italian-American North End, June 26!

Capossela's book on Italian-American life.

The North End Historical Society is hosting an interview with Dom Capossela, a restauraneur, author, and native North End Italian-American. "The interview will cover Dom's love of the North End, Italian cooking, and how the neighborhood that was once a tight-knit community of Italian-Americans came to be known as the gem of the city of Boston," according to NEHS.

This is an excellent opportunity to listen hear about the cultural make-up of a Boston immigrant community first-hand, and to ask questions that might better help you understand Italian-American society in post-World War II Boston.

The discussion will be hosted at the Nazzaro Community Center, 30 North Bennet St., Boston, MA, 02113. This event is free and open to the public.

James McPherson delivered at Lowell Lectures

Historian James McPherson (Princeton University) didn’t set out to be a Civil War expert. Presenting his talk “Why the Civil War Still Matters” at the Boston Public Library as part of the Lowell Lectures series, Prof. McPherson explained that upon entering graduate school at Johns Hopkins in the late 1950s, he had an interest in studying southern history, which as a Midwesterner, he found “exotic and mysterious.”

It was the Civil Rights movement of his era that brought him to study the Civil War and Reconstruction. In the midst of forced school desegregation, McPherson wanted to learn more about how the 13^th-15^th amendments that were called on came to be, and how they hadn’t been properly implemented for almost 100 years.

With this introduction, McPherson spoke for just over a half hour about the legacy and significance of the Civil War in the modern world. Citing the conflict as the most popular history subject among Americans due to its closeness to them, its drama and death toll, and its larger-than-life characters, he touched on a greater, more subtle significance: The Civil War was a fight over two different kinds of liberties.

Read more after the jump