Basil Antonelli was born in a tiny village, in a quiet valley, beneath the Apennine heights of central Italy in 1920. Forces drove him across an ocean where he found a new and better life in America. There he flourished. Out of a sense of duty to his adopted home he joined the United States Army only months before Pearl Harbor. He fought in the campaign for North Africa and his winding journey eventually brought him to Italy and finally to the same valley of his birth where he paid the ultimate price for the freedom of his family, his countrymen, and humanity.

The American:The Life, Times, and War of Basil Antonelli, is a quintessentially American biography of immigration, assimilation, and sacrifice. It is proof that being American has never been about where you were born.