Periodic Words: Stranger
Periodic Words: Stranger In the Preface to If This Is A Man, Levi warns the reader about some possible consequences of organized political systems: “Many people—many nations—, can find themselves…
Essays
Current scholarship on Italian Fascist anti-Semitism in honour of Michele Sarfatti
Journal of Modern Italian Studies: On the 80th anniversary of the Racial Laws. Articles reflecting the current scholarship on Italian Fascist anti-Semitism in honour of Michele Sarfatti. Annalisa Capristo and…
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…
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…