Jerre Mangione

Jerre Mangione's book Mount Allegro has found its fifth publisher in as many decades. He speaks with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about straddling the line between Sicilian and American cultures and the changing nature of Italian American communities in both cities and suburbs.

Jerre Mangione is an author and the director of Creative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania. His newest book is "An Ethnic at Large: A Memoir of America in the Thirties and Forties." He's currently writing a book about Italian-Americans. He joins the show to discuss the recent enforcement of an IRS regulation that requires that publishers destroy or remainder their back-stock in order to take certain deductions. Mangione's book "The Dream and the Deal" nearly faced that fate.