Catholics have a special reverence for those canonized as saints by the pope. We believe they were holy people, and on their death they were with God. Catholics pray to saints for their intercession with God to grant special requests. The four saints whose lives are briefly described in this book share a very unique relationship. They are the only saints who lived and died as American or United States citizens.

Stories, Streets, and Saints documents the history of an important Italian American neighborhood, Boston's North End, from the age of immigration at the turn of the twentieth century to the era of neighborhood upheaval in the "New Boston" of the 1980s. Drawing on years of fieldwork, on-site photography, and scholarly research, Anthony V. Riccio records, translates, and transcribes compelling oral histories of elderly Italian American storytellers who weave social history in their unique village idiom, providing an intimate look at daily life in an Italian American neighborhood. Testimonies of post-Unification southern Italy reconstruct the dire social and economic conditions that caused millions to pursue the promise of America. Rare firsthand stories of the Spanish Flu offer timely narratives in the wake of COVID-19, and eyewitness descriptions reconstruct the horrific Molasses Explosion of 1919. Riccio's own photographs from 1979 to 1983, along with images from old family albums, illustrate these oral histories, creating a lasting record of the experiences of Italian Americans, who, like many other ethnic groups, contributed mightily to the building of America.

The Way of Saint James: Journey to America is the story about a family with origins in Spain and their journey to America, including the United States of America and Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos (the United Mexican States). The story focuses on the lives of two men, Mihail Gurevich and Baltazar de la Vega. Their families’ background, history, and the lives they led in Europe under conditions that motivated both men to immigrate to America to seek a better life are told. Both men departed when they were young and overcame several obstacles with a resolve to achieve a life in which they could live in freedom and prosper with hard work and dedication toward family. Both individuals were products of not only their place of birth but also the societies in which they lived. Both left what could have been a life not confronted by danger and the unknown. Both chose to venture forth, accepting whatever challenges and risks life may present to them. Their journeys occurred against the larger history of Europe in which they lived. Their journey is similar to the mystical El Camino de Santiago, the Way of Saint James, which served as a metaphor of their quest.

In the early twenty-first century it had become a cliché that there was a 'God Gap' between a more religious United States and a more secular Europe. The apparent religious differences between the United States and western Europe continue to be a focus of intense and sometimes bitter debate between three of the main schools in the sociology of religion. According to the influential 'Secularization Thesis', secularization has been an integral part of the processes of modernisation in the Western world since around 1800. For proponents of this thesis, the United States appears as an anomaly and they accordingly give considerable attention to explaining why it is different. For other sociologists, however, the apparently high level of religiosity in the USA provides a major argument in their attempts to refute the Thesis. Secularization and Religious Innovation in the Atlantic World provides a systematic comparison between the religious histories of the United States and western European countries from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century, noting parallels as well as divergences, examining their causes and especially highlighting change over time. This is achieved by a series of themes which seem especially relevant to this agenda, and in each case the theme is considered by two scholars. The volume examines whether American Christians have been more innovative, and if so how far this explains the apparent 'God Gap'. It goes beyond the simple American/European binary to ask what is 'American' or 'European' in the Christianity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in what ways national or regional differences outweigh these commonalities.