I was born in Rome, Italy, the son of Enrico Modigliani and Olga Flaschel. My father was a leading pediatrician in the city and my mother was a volunteer social worker. My school performance in the early years was good…
The Max Ascoli Papers at Boston University (from The Bridge) Max Ascoli (1898-1978) created The Reporter in 1949, a magazine that became a leading voice for liberalism in America for the next 20 years. Special Collections contains the editorial files…
Pioneering microbial geneticist Salvador Edward Luria was born Salvatore Luria in Turin, Italy, on August 13, 1912, the second son of David Luria, an accountant, and his wife Esther. His school years coincided with the rise of fascism in Italy,…
How would you describe the current state of research on the Racial Laws in Italy? 2010 There is today an extensive body of literature analyzing the development of the Italian historiography on the Fascist persecution of the Jews. A good…
Levi's experience as a partisan—and the execution of two teenage boys—showed him humans' capacity for extreme violence. Gavin Jacobson, December 15, 2015 In September 1943, Primo Levi took to the mountains in northwest Italy to escape the Nazis. A keen mountaineer…
A Primo Levi Atlas: Primo Levi di fronte e di profilo, by Marco Belpoliti Interview by Alessandro Cassin Marco Belpoliti has crowned his decades long critical engagement with Levi with an ambitious new book, Primo Levi di fronte e di profilo (Primo…
Roger Cohen Primo Levi survived Auschwitz through a double act of profound humanity: his ability even in the darkest days to see in fellow prisoners “men and not things” and so, as he put it, avoid “that total humiliation and…
A book by Gianna Pontecorboli. Translation by Marion Lignana Rosenberg and Steven Baker Pontecorboli's book is a long overdue account of a lesser-known aspect of the Italian anti-Jewish persecution: the exile of Italian Jews to America. Forced to the US by the…
In the fall of 2015, crowning a twelve year effort by W.W. Norton’s editor Bob Weil, Primo Levi’s complete works became available in English for the first time. Norton’s Liveright imprint released a boxed three-volume collection arranged in the chronological order…
Ernesto Ferrero, 2009 I first met Primo Levi in February 1963, a month before the release of his book The Truce. I had just walked into the press office at Giulio Einaudi publishing house. I had not yet read If This Is…