Join Us For A Presentation of: "Carving a Niche for Himself; The Untold Story of Luigi Del Bianco & Mount Rushmore". Tues. Sept. 29th @ 7:00 PM. FEATURING Author, Douglas J. Gladstone, whose controversial book argues that the United States Department of the Interior's National Park Service (NPS) is chiseling Mount Rushmore's Italian American chief carver out of posthumous credit, will talk about the matter at The Italian Cultural Foundation at Casa Belvedere on Tuesday, September 29, at 7 P.M.

Gladstone, whose critically acclaimed Carving a Niche for Himself; The Untold Story of Luigi Del Bianco & Mount Rushmore was published last year by Bordighera Press, took up the cause of the obscure immigrant from the Italian Province of Pordenone after listening to Del Bianco's sole surviving child and grandson plead his case during a 2010 interview on National Public Radio.

Del Bianco has been consistently left out of most major books about the memorial, including the late Rex Allen Smith's The Carving of Mount Rushmore, which is widely considered the definitive take on the project's engineering and carving dynamics. The Smith book was the primary source material used in a 2002 Public Broadcasting System (PBS) documentary about the memorial, and that PBS documentary doesn't mention Del Bianco either.

Russ Joseph Morisi, an adjunct professor at the College of Staten Island whose master's thesis is entitled A Socioeconomic Study Exploring the Immigration of Artisan Stone Carvers from Italy to the United States Circa 1830-1920, acknowledges in the book that he never came across any information on Del Bianco and that was the reason he omitted him from his work.

Q & A will follow. Donation: $20pp. Refreshments will be served. The book will be available for sale and signing by author. Kindly RSVP in advance so that we can plan accordingly. Call 718-273-7660 or E-Mail [email protected] Parking lot is located directly across the street at Notre Dame Academy.

Individuals can also order Gladstone's book directly off of Casa Belvedere's home page, at http://www.casa-belvedere.org/blog

Media interested in speaking with Gladstone may contact him directly at 518-817-8253.