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Books March 12, 2024

These Thoughts of Mine

These Thoughts of Mine: Diaries of an Italian Jewish Partisan, January 1940–February 1944, edited by Guri Schwarz, Yad Vashem 2023 Emanuele Artom (Aosta, 1915–Turin, 1944) was an Italian Jewish intellectual….

Essays September 19, 2023

The Heretical Origins of the Sonnet

This essay was published in: Daily JStor, April 21, 2021 Of variable rhyme scheme and meter, sonnets are sometimes structured into stanzas of an octet and a sestet or of…

Books in Italian July 18, 2023

Thanks Goodness I Am Here

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Ringrazio il cielo di essere qui Lettere a Alberto Carocci da Larchmont e Beverly Hills 1939/41.  Alessandro Panajia, Ed. Le Sillabe, Florence, 2021  In July 1939, Mario and Clara…

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Books March 23, 2009

History as Memory

History as Memory: Conversation with Sergio Parussa by Alessandro Cassin Writing as Freedom, Writing as Testimony, Syracuse University Press, 2008, by Sergio Parussa is a highly personal study of four…

Books March 19, 2009

Boualem Sansal Pays Tribute to Primo Levi

In a Complex New Book, Algerian Novelist Boualem Sansal Pays Tribute to Primo Levi.   Alessandro Cassin The German Mujahid, Europa Editions, 2009, by the Algerian writer Boualem Sansal is…

Books March 14, 2009

Benevolence and Betrayal

Alexander Stille, Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism, Picador, 2003   Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award this book is a profoundly moving history of…

News March 14, 2009

Jewish Studies in Venice

  Opens in Venice the International Center for Jewish Studies The shock of the Shoah has caused too many Jewish lives and cultures to be discovered after they had been…

Books March 9, 2009

Piero Sraffa

Alessandro Roncaglia, Piero Sraffa: His life, thought and cultural heritage, Routledge, 2000-2009   This is a lively, intellectual biography of a leading protagonist of 20th century culture and his relations…

Books March 8, 2009

This Has Happened

Piera Sonnino (Ann Goldstein, translator), This Has Happened: An Italian Family in Auschwitz, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008 Five years after her return home from Auschwitz, Piera Sonnino found the courage to…