This story is told in the introduction to the book. Stewart Wolf was a doctor who taught in the medical school at the University of Oklahoma in the 1950s. He heard about the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania, where nearly all of the residents were originally from the town of Roseto Valfortore in the Italian province of Foggia. These people also had fewer instances of heart disease (and of many other diseases) than people living in any other part of the United States. Wolf wanted to figure out why. He and his team studied the Rosetans’ diets, genetic make-ups, and lifestyles. The difference seemed to be that people had brought the paesani culture with them from Italy. It generated a sense of community much stronger than that found in other typical settlements in America. Generations lived together under the same roof. People visited with one another regularly. They worshiped at the same church and belonged to a variety of community organizations. Roseto was an example of an outlier: “a place that lay outside everyday experience, where the normal rules did not apply.” (p. 7)