The New York Review of Books
Italy: The Crooks in Control
Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano, translated from the Italian by Virginia Jewiss Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 301 pp., $25.00 Last year, Italy seemed to wake up to the problem of the Camorra—the Neapolitan equivalent of the Mafia—in the form of 2,700 tons of garbage. On the nightly news for several days running, TV viewers stared with…
Continue readingItaly Against Itself
La deriva: perché l’Italia rischia il naufragio (Adrift: Why Italy Risks a Shipwreck) by Gian Antonio Stella and Sergio Rizzo Milan: Rizzoli, 308 pp., €19.50 La paura e la speranza (Fear and Hope) by Giulio Tremonti Milan: Mondadori, 111 pp., €16.00 Se li conosci li eviti (If You Know Them, You Avoid Them) by Peter…
Continue readingThe Berlusconi Show
Traditionally on losing an election, a politician calls to congratulate the winner and urges voters to put their differences aside and come together for the good of the country. But Silvio Berlusconi is anything but a traditional politician. Instead, after his narrow defeat by the center-left candidate, Romano Prodi, Berlusconi made charges of fraud (even…
Continue readingItaly: The Family Business
Italy and Its Discontents: Family, Civil Society, State, 1980-2001 by Paul Ginsborg Palgrave Macmillan, 521 pp., $35.00 “The Patrimonial Ambitions of Silvio B” by Paul Ginsborg New Left Review 21, May–June 2003 The Dark Heart of Italy: Travels Through Time and Space Across Italy by Tobias Jones London: Faber and Faber, 266 pp., £16.99 A revised…
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