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C onn ect i ng C u ltu r es T hrough F am i ly and F ood

chinery of the Industrial Revolution. Even by the turn of the 20th century, most people lived in rural areas, growing crops and raising animals to feed their families. For the nation’s poor people, those were tough times. As countries like the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia were leading theway into aneweconomy,many Italianswere getting left behind. Looking for a BetterWay B efore 1860, Italy was not the country we recognize today. Instead, it was a collection of nation-states, eachwith its own government. But there were efforts to stitch all these different parts into a single whole. After decades of wars and political upheaval, by 1871 the many different regions were finally united into Italy. As this new nation established itself over the next two decades,

standards of living var- ied widely. Some citizens, especially in the north, were relatively well off. Others struggled to get by. And many, especially in the south, were des- perately, crushingly poor. They were overwhelm- ingly peasants, living off the land. That’s always a life of hard work, often at the mercy of the weather. There are good years and

Here’s Milan, Italy, in the late 1800s, a city still far from industrial modernization.