In 1910, nearly half of Italian immigrants in the United States lived in cities and towns with fewer than 100,000 residents. These relatively smaller metropolitan areas encouraged the development of cohesive immigrant communities that are well known in large cities but also allowed greater influence in the political, social, and commercial life of the town. It is in this class of communities, often neglected by scholars whose attention is drawn to the large metropolitan areas, that Bean explores in The Urban Colonists, a richly detailed history of Italian Americans in Utica, New York.
