The history of pizza can be traced pretty far back, to the greeks actually, foccocia was the original pizza, and had extra virgin olive oil and rosemary and herbs... naturally it evolved into what we know today... some say pizza is american, but its not, its italian, the tomatoes were brought back by columbus to italy from the "new world" (the americas) and then italians fell in love with them, but the tomato pie (as my older relatives call pizza) definitely came from italy... American pizza seems to be overwhelmed with too much, thick thick cheese, not much sauce and/or inudnated with many things that don't need to be there, (like cheese stuffed crust, meatballs, etc)... in italy its a simple balance of all ingredients and nothing overpowers the other ingredients, equal parts of sauce, cheese, basil, and not globs and globs of EVERYTHING... I can't remember the last time i had a decent slice of pizza in this area, I shot a documentary in brooklyn last fall, i think that was the last time i had a "real" slice of pizza...