Thomas Cahill made the last great bag of money to be made selling to the Irish-American audience of book buyers with How the Irish Saved Civilization. The book is a slightly strained retelling of how Irish monasteries and scriptoriums preserved much of the literature of Ancient Greece and Rome, as the Dark Ages descended. They preserved this learning through the fall of Rome, and brought it back to places as far away as Mainz, Germany.
Having been raised in the Northeast of the United States, within commuting distance of New York City, I have come to identify Italian delis closely with civilization itself, and with the preservation of civilization, akin to those monasteries. During the few years I spent living in Northern Virginia I often described it as a desert, albeit one filled with 7-Elevens and Safeways. I had finally graduated to desk work, but part of me longed to be back in the chemical factory in Connecticut. At east there, I knew where to go get a bacon, egg, and cheese on a Portuguese roll before the toil started.
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