Year End
“If this has happened, it can happen again, when all the conditions necessary to trigger the mechanism are in place once again.” Primo Levi From its inception, Printed Matter has…
Essays
Publishing and Culture: The Alchemy of Ideas
Since the days of Gutenberg and probably long before, publishers have depended on what was most popular, and therefore profitable, for their existence. From breathless, half-imagined travelogues to more salacious…
Translating Giorgio Bassani
The work of relatively few Italian novelists from the 20th Century has so far been translated more than once, but only Giorgio Bassani’s —in part or in its entirety— has…
New Book Explores America’s Flirt With Italian Fascism
Mauro Canali’s La scoperta dell’Italia examines the activity, impact, and perspectives of American correspondents in Italy from 1900 to 1945 and the beginnings of the modern tradition of international political…
Filo-So-Fare
The resurgence of the Italian silk tallit. Alessandro Cassin in conversation with Rav Umberto Piperno Many of us remember well the years Rav Umberto Piperno spent in New York: his…
Being a Centaur
What follows is Alessandro Di Rocco’s acceptance speech of the Centaur Award 2018.I want to thank all of you for being here tonight. I am honored and humbled by this tribute.
Nuto Revelli: the History of the Present
It is a rare pleasure to turn the last page of a book, and remain in a state of bewilderment with the feeling of having traveled a road previously unknown….
The Doctored ‘Memoir’ of Edgardo Mortara
The Doctored ‘Memoir’ of a Jewish Boy Kidnapped by the Vatican Edgardo Mortara’s autobiography is roiling Catholic-Jewish relations—based on the false assumption that the text is accurate. After a century…
The “Aryanization” of Italian Musical Life
This article was originally published by the Orel Foundation and is republished with minor edits by permission. In Italy there is absolutely no differentiation between Jews and non–Jews, in all fields,…
Ghetto and Not
The Relationship between Jews and Christians. Toward a Redefinition of the Ghetto In Italy, during the past two decades, Jewish history has pervasively captured the attention of researchers – even…