Christ in Concrete by Pietro di Donato - ISBN: 9780451214218
Paperback
One of the 20th century‘s greatest works of social protest-and its 21st-century message. A classic examination of the American experience for hard-working Italian immigrants living in New York City’s Lower East Side shortly before the Great Depression, "Christ in Concrete" focuses …

Christ in Concrete

$44.33

  • Paperback

    240 pages

  • Release Date

    7 September 2004

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Summary

Giving voice to the hardworking Italian immigrants who worked, lived, and died in New York City shortly before the Great Depression, this American classic ranks with Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath as one of the 20th century’s great works of social protest.Largely autobiographical, Christ in Concrete opens with the dramatic Good Friday collapse of a building under construction, crucifying in concrete an Italian construction worker, whose death leaves his pregnant wife and eight children impov…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780451214218
ISBN-10:0451214218
Author:Pietro di Donato, Studs Terkel
Publisher:Penguin Putnam Inc
Imprint:New American Library
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:240
Release Date:7 September 2004
Weight:201g
Dimensions:200mm x 132mm x 17mm
What They're Saying

Critics Review

Praise for Christ in Concrete

“Written in white-hot passion.”—The New Yorker

“Robust and full-blooded and passionate, now and then almost to the point of craziness…[di Donato] has imagination and a healthy sense of poetry…sometimes one feels as though bricks and stones and trowelfuls of mortar have been thrown onto the pages and from them have arisen words.”—Saturday Review

About The Author

Pietro di Donato

Pietro di Donato was born on April 3, 1911, inWest Hoboken,New Jersey. When his bricklayer father, Geremio, died in a building collapse in 1923, Pietro left school to support his family as a construction worker. Though he had little formal education, Donato loved French and Russian novels, andtook night classes at the city college in construction and engineering. Inspired by the works of mile Zola, he decided to begin writing about his experiences in the Italian American community. In 1937 the first version of Christ in Concrete-a chronicle of his father’s life-was published in Esquire. It was then expanded into a novel and became a bestseller. Donato wrote five more books in his lifetime.He died in 1992.Studs Terkel(1912-2008)grew up in Chicago. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1932 and from the University of Chicago Law School in 1934. He acted in radio soap operas, worked as a disk jockey, a radio commentator, and a TV emcee, and traveled all over the world doing on-the-spot interviews. He also had a daily radio program on WFMT in Chicago that was syndicated throughout the country. He was the author ofAmerican Dreams- Lost and Found;Working;Hard Times- An Oral History of the Great Depression;Division Street- AmericaGiants of Jazz; andTalking to Myself.

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