About the Author
Salvatore Mondello was born on February 27, 1932 in East Harlem, New York City. Brought up by Sicilian immigrant grandparents, he developed an early appreciation for Sicilian culture and traditions, an appreciation that shaped and defined his career and personality.
Equally significant was the cultural environment of Italian East Harlem, especially its street culture and its schools. He attended Benjamin Franklin High School, where he came under the influence of Dr. Leonard Covello, the celebrated principal of the school and the founder of the American Italian Historical Association. Covello and Dina DiPino, his Italian language teacher, taught him to value and enjoy his Italian roots while novelist Charles Calitri introduced him to the profound delights of American and English literature.
At NYU, where Mondello received his Ph.D. in history in 1960 he learned the importance of historical knowledge from Bayrd Still, Ray W. Irwin, Leo Gershoy and A. William Salomone. Unforgettable was the humanity of the Polish poet-scholar Ludwik Krzyzanowski.
Mondello taught history at Rider College, Ulster Community College and the Rochester Institute of Technology where he holds the title of Professor Emeritus. He has received awards from the State University of New York and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
He is the author of many scholarly articles and has three published books to his credit. The Italian Americans (Twayne Publishers, 1971) coauthored with Luciano J. Iorizzo, was a national best seller and the first scholarly treatment of that subject. It appeared in a revised edition in 1980. Mondello’s doctoral dissertation, The Italian Immigrant in Urban America, 1880-1920, as Reported in the Contemporary Periodical Press, was published by the Arno Press of the New York Times in 1980. In 1989, the Edwin Mellen Press published Mondello’s The Private Papers of John Vanderlyn (1775-1852) American Portrait Painter.
Married to the late Maria Rampello, Professor Mondello has a son and a granddaughter.