In the apse of a midcentury chapel in Upper Manhattan, there is a sparkling mosaic mural that depicts the life of America’s first saint, Frances Xavier Cabrini. The mural was recently restored to its original luster using period tiles, or tesserae, made of various types of marble (Carrara, Botticino) as well as gilded Venetian glass tiles, made by fusing 22-karat gold leaf between layers of glass and crystal.

Carol Costello anchors the 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. ET edition of CNN's "Newsroom" each weekday. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

I am American. Italian-American. Or maybe I'm American-Italian or an American of Italian descent. Nah, I'm Italian-American. It's how I was raised to think of myself, even though I was born in the most American of cities, Canton, Ohio.

John Hooper says he is often a little puzzled by Italy. “It’s a country that seems to be all on the surface, but actually a lot of things are hidden,” said Mr. Hooper, author of “The Italians,” a cultural study of the country that was published by Viking last month. “That can be at times sinister, but it can also be fascinating and rewarding, if you go off the beaten track.”

Say the word Italy, and we think of sun-kissed piazzas, stars over the Mediterranean, spellbinding museums, and mouth-watering food. But as veteran Guardian and Financial Times correspondent John Hooper explains in his new book, The Italians, it’s a complex, sometimes infuriating, country where the past is always present.

At least 29 migrants have died of hypothermia on board Italian coastguard vessels after being picked up from an inflatable boat adrift near Libya, the chief health official on the island of Lampedusa has said.