In his long career as an historian and author, Massapequa resident Salvatore LaGumina has carved out a niche as one of the nation's leading chroniclers of the Italian-American experience in the United States.

In his latest book, The Humble And The Heroic: Wartime Italian-Americans, Dr. LaGumina looks at the complex condition Italian-Americans found themselves in during World War II.

"I want to shed light on what was a difficult time for the United States and what was an even more difficult time for those people whose ancestry was the same as a nation we were at war with," he said.

Dr. LaGumina notes that of the three Axis powers at war with the Allies---Germany, Japan, and Italy---there were more native-born Italians living in the United States who were not yet citizens than those who traced their ancestry to Germany or Japan.

As such, they were labeled as "resident enemy aliens" and according to Dr. LaGumina, fingerprinted and registered with government agencies.

"This is a story many people are unfamiliar with," Dr. LaGumina said. "It is a story that needs to be told, namely how ordinary people performed in an extraordinary way during a time of danger for the United States." That includes average Italian-American citizens who were not watched so closely by the government and who served on the front lines and in other stations during the war.

"These are contributions people should know about before that generation passes from the scene," he said.

A native of the Ridgewood section of Brooklyn, Dr. LaGumina has his own memories of those wartime years, which are included in the book. Still, The Humble and The Heroic is a scholarly effort, supplemented by over 500 footnotes. The book was published in May by Cambria Press and runs 334 pages in its paperback edition.

The book has already received positive reviews from Dr. LaGumina's peers in academia.

"Salvatore LaGumina's memoir of life in an Italian-American community during World War II is a poignant story illuminating an important chapter in our collective memory of the past," noted Stanislao G. Pugliese, Professor of History at Hofstra. "It is told with charm and grace and will be of interest to general readers and specialists on the subject."

"I recall the great pride within my immigrant family for its two sons who served in World War II," added Joseph Sciame, National Past President of the Order of Sons of Italy and Vice President for Community Relations at St. John's University. "What Dr. LaGumina does in his publication is to enliven our spirits and makes real the great sacrifices that Italian-Americans made for the safety and security of the world, always asking for little but serving for the cause of democracy. We owe Dr. LaGumina a debt of gratitude for emblazoning in our hearts and minds the travails of the humble men and women --our parents to the great crusade for freedom."

"La Gumina has created a unique pastiche of scholarship and memoir in this reminiscence of life among those Tom Brokaw called "The Greatest Generation," said Fred Gardaphe, Director of Italian American Studies, Stony Brook University. "Story and history from Italian-America's elder statesman [together] form a personalized history full of information accessible to a wide range of readers and reward the student and scholar alike."

The Humble and The Heroic is only Dr. LaGumina's latest contribution to this particular segment of the American experience.

His studies of Italian-Americans has included biographies of politicians as different as Vincent Impellitteri, the popular mayor of New York City during its last era of relative normalcy in the early 1950s and Vito Marcantonio, the congressman from East Harlem who had no difficulty in running for office on the Communist Party label.

Other books cover life in Long Island, with such titles as From Steerage to Suburb: Long Island Italians, another paperback title published in 1989, and Long Island Italians, a book published in the popular Images of America series.

Immigrants Speak: The Italian Americans Tell Their Story is an oral history published in 1979. Finally, Dr. LaGumina has published two books with Frank J. Cavaioli as a co-author: The Ethnic Dimension in American Society and Peripheral Americans.

Dr. LaGumina is a graduate of both Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and St. John's, where he received both his M.A. and PhD. For over 40 years, he taught American history at Nassau County Community College and in retirement from teaching, he continues the life of scholarship and writing.