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Books, Essays October 16, 2025

La Storia

Elsa Morante. Excerpts from La Storia, remembering October 16, 1943 Not even from her mother had she ever heard this denomination “Aryans”; in fact, the de-nomination of Jews itself, for…

Essays, Interviews June 9, 2025

Thruth and the Holocaust

“If you no longer want to believe the truth, nobody will want to believe you.” Zelman Lewental, prisoner of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando, quoted in Franco Fortini, “I cani del Sinai”. …

Essays September 2, 2024

Hatching the Cobra

Let no one praise Perillus, who was cruder than the tyrant Phalaris, for whom he constructed a brazen bull, promising that when a man was enclosed therein and a fire…

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Essays June 6, 2014

The Matteotti murder, 1924-2014

The Matteotti murder and the origins of Mussolini’s totalitarian Fascist regime in Italy This paper was delivered on June 2 at Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò NYU on the occasion of…

Books June 5, 2014

A Legal Examination of Mussolini’s Race Laws

Rutgers Law Prof’s New Book Delivers Comprehensive Legal Examination of Mussolini’s Race Laws Michael Livingstone, The Fascists and the Jews of Italy: Mussolini’s Race Laws, 1938-1943 Cambridge University Press While…

Books June 4, 2014

Mediterranean Enlightenment

Mediterranean Enlightenment: Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform, Stanford University Press 2014 The Mediterranean port of Livorno was home to one of the most prominent and privileged Jewish enclaves of…

Books, Essays June 4, 2014

Italian Jewry in the Early Modern Era

Italian Jewry in the Early Modern Era: Essays in Intellectual History     Research does not always proceed according to a predetermined plan. In some cases, the opposite is true:…

Academia, Interviews May 18, 2014

The Master Puppeteer

Mussolini’s Manipulation of US correspondents in Fascist Italy Mussolini a darling of the American media of the 1920’s and late 1930”s? This long forgotten fact, together with his being described…