politics
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Fascists or Clowns?
Italy remembers its proud past with names on streets and busts in the piazzas. Streets are named for poets, composers, liberators, historical dates (XX Septembre), Communist thinkers (Antonio Gramsci), Machiavelli, and even Sacco and Vanzetti, the Italian-American anarchists executed by… Continue reading
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World-Wide Worry (and Work-Around)
In our balanced Constitutional system, the fifty states of the United States are said to be “experimental laboratories” of democracy. But a single state has limited authority to experiment with regulating internet networks. California is trying it with its Consumer Privacy… Continue reading
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The universal faith — money
How earthlings think about money is strangely consistent around the world. Looking at renting an apartment in an Italian city on the Adriatic, the same system that measures market values in Decatur, Ga., is in effect there too, or in… Continue reading
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Lessons for us today, from Italians
I love old books lining bookshelves. The collection in the North Carolina home of a couple of friends held classics of Machiavelli scholarship. I gently pulled out, like sneaking a square of chocolate fudge, a vellum-bound volume. Carol Darr, the… Continue reading
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Making Europe Miserable
Did Trump voters want to see America make Europeans suffer? Make them be on their own against Russia? Face inflation, recession and loss of American goods because of these new tariffs? I don’t remember our relationship with Europe being a… Continue reading
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Populism vs. ‘Civilization’
Here in Atlanta, around Emory, you hear about a friend or neighbor who got a layoff notice yesterday – no April Fool’s joke – among about 2,400 being cut from the CDC. Researchers who have worked at the agency for… Continue reading
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The Urbino Press Award
Every year, Italy honors a single American journalist as the very best of the best. Pulitzer Prizes may scatter to many journalists, but there is only one Urbino Award each year. To scholars of Italian history, this implies that a… Continue reading
An American journalist heads for Italy to see his country changing from afar. 