A sample of what I've been working on

These are a few begining paragraphs... Open to suggestions/criticisms

"This is to be a work with two related, yet vastly different purposes. The first is to chronicle the experiences of two families across 140 years of European and American history. Besides being a personal record, I also hope to contribute to the Italian American historiagraphy, expanding to a new generation the path blazed by Andrew Rolle, Jerre Mangione, Ben Morreale, Richard Gambino, and so many others.

Just as all but a handful of World War I veterans are dead, the same is true of the vast majority of the Southern and Eastern Europeans who were able to get in before the 1921 and 1924 quota acts closed the gates. The last immigrants who would remember their home countries would be in their mid 80's or older. History is a one way hour glass, how many grains of sand get recorded as they fall is up to us, and we are swiftly running out of grains of sand.

I am both an heir and a participant to the experiences of the two families in question. I have sufficient distance to see through the potential fallacies and biases of the primary sources, yet close enough to those primary sources to respect what they sacrificed and accomplished."