This is the top shelf of one of the Italian and Italian-themed book cases in the office library I share with my wife now that she is also semi-retired. In the center are my 1977 Harper & Row Book Club Edition of "O America: When you and I were young" as well my 1964 eighth printing of "The Italians: A Full-Length Portrait featuring their Manners and Morals" by Luigi Barzini. In the interests of journalistic integrity I must admit that I rearranged them for this "Main Illustration" because they were actually on the left hand side of the shelf. I also moved Ignazio Silone's "Bread and Wine" as well as Carlo Levi's "Christ Stopped at Eboli" closer to Barzini and editorially placed Gay Talese's "Unto the Sons" and "Honor thy Father" further away. Finally, I left Pietro Di Donato's "Christ in Concrete" and my collection of Mario Puzo's books where they always sit on the shelf. As Luigi might say, "C'e una cosa italiana."

One of the ways I can connect to my distant Italian roots is cooking Italian. In this instance I am preparing my half-Sicilian version of broccoli rape.

I was trying to figure out an appropriate image for this article from what I had handy that would adequately symbolize the relationship between iconic Italians and equally iconic Obamaniacs. I finally settled on this one. My sister-in-law had given me the Taoromina statue as a gift after her visit to Sicily and my wife wore the Obama button during the campaign after we stopped supporting John Edwards. I don't think we had any Edwards buttons even though we had sent him money. The lighting wasn't very good on my file cabinet, but as a fortuitous accident the image nicely symbolizes the hazy relationship between the President-elect Barack Obama and the future of Italian America's politics.

I didn't have handy an appropriate image of the nastily divisive United States Presidential campaign but a beautiful rainbow after a storm is always nice.

These are images of my Sicilian-born grandfather Gerolimo Cangelosi. One is him as a child with his father and the other is a portrait of him as a rather handsome young man. I never met him but my mother told me he was a good father who started out in business by selling watermelon by the slice on the streets of Manhattan, and that he also helped to build (dig) the Panama Canal. He became a successful businessman and landlord in Brooklyn.

This is a summer evening scene of a peaceful, well-kept, and otherwise "insular" street in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. In 1989 the neighborhood's reputation was forever stained by a small group of racist young men.

Pedestrian in Rome near the Central Station

Politics and Corruption seem to have the same democratic roots.

Perhaps a parent and child put this together. I read the twin tower candles, fire engine and maybe a lost loved one in the form of a doll.

MSNBC and NBC talk show host Chris Matthews as seen on subway poster in the left-liberal Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.