Biography of an Industrial Town

A pioneering work in oral history, this book tells the story of the rise and fall of the industrial revolution and the apogee and crisis of the labor movement through an oral history of Terni, a steel town in Central Italy and the seat of the first large industrial enterprise in Italy. This story is told through a combination of stories, songs, myths and memories from over 200 voices of five generations, woven with a wealth of archival material.

Alessandro Portelli is a former professor of Anglo-American Literature at the University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy. He is the winner of the prestigious Viareggio Prize as well as an Oral History Association book award for The Order Has Been Carried Out (Palgrave, 2003). 

Part I.- 1. Introduction: Speaking, Writing and Remembering.- 2. The Red and the Black: Rebels, Patriots and Outlaws.- 3. How Green Was My Valley: Feudal Landlords and Struggling Peasants.- 4. How Steel Was Forged: The Making of a Working Class.- 5. Rebels: Socialists, Anarchists and the Subversive Tradition.- 6. The Iron Heel, or, We Didn't Have Any Trouble: The Coming of Fascism.- 7. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Surviving and Resisting Fascism.- 8. Apocalypse Now: War, Hunger and Mass Destruction.- 9. Red Is the Color: The Gramsci Brigade.- 10. The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Economic Boom and Industrial Crisis.- 11. Staying Alive: The Rise of Alternative Cultures.- Part II: Specialty Steel.- 12. David and Goliath: The Town, the Factory and the Strike.- 13. The Workers and the World: Terni Steel in the Age of Globalization.- 14. The Empire Strikes Back: The Town, the Factory and the Strike: Reprise.- 15. ATale of Two Cities: Death, Survival and Powerlessness in the Neo-Liberal Age.- 16. Epilogue: Working-Class Sublime.