O America: When You and I Were Young

by Luigi Barzini

The veteran Italian journalist-author recalls his early years in the United States as student and reporter and reflects, from the vantage point of experience, on his and the nation's onetime confident innocence and challenging hope

329 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1977

About the author

Luigi Barzini was an Italian journalist, writer and politician most famous for his 1964 book The Italians, delving deeply into the Italian national character and introducing many Anglo-Saxon readers to Italian life and culture.

Son of Luigi Barzini (1874-1947)

Reviews

[Ozen Guner · Rating 4 out of 5]

[8.1 / 10] Luigi Barzini delivers perhaps one of the best accounts on the vibrant and 'young' America, just above de Beauvoir's "America Day by Day." As the son of one of the most brilliant journalists of Italy during the war years, Luigi Barzini 'padre', Luigi Barzini possessed a keen understanding of what America and 'having an American mind' was all about. "Later I learned that many Americans also obliterated themselves in other ways," observed Barzini, "plunging into endless hard work until they died in harness, pursuing fanatical causes, amassing vast fortunes, or conquering immense power. ... This, of course," he went, "was one of the enigmas of American life, possibly the central enigma, whose solution would probably clarify every other."