Within the pantheon of 20th-century American business leaders stands the Italian-American A. P. Giannini (1870-1949). As financier and banker he transformed the nature of banking in large and small ways; as an Italian-American he became a symbol of legitimate success and a source of practical help to immigrants and an inspiration to their descendants.

Amadeo Peter Giannini was born May 6, 1870, in San Jose, California, to Virginia and Luigi Giannini, immigrants from Genoa. The Gianninis possessed enough resources to lease a hotel in San Jose. After several years of successful hotel-keeping, Luigi purchased a 40-acre farm. He was killed in 1877 by a disgruntled worker in a quarrel over a one dollar debt. The following year Virginia married Lorenzo Scatena, who had worked his way to America from Lucca as a sailor. The Scatena family moved in 1882 to San Francisco, where Lorenzo took a job with a fruit wholesaling company...