The New York Review of Books
Palermo: The Photography of Death
1. One morning in 1993, several Italian policemen arrived unexpectedly at the house of Letizia Battaglia, where she has her office, carrying a warrant to conduct a search of her vast photo archive. Battaglia had worked as the photography director of L’Ora, Palermo’s left-wing daily newspaper, from 1974 until shortly before the paper folded in 1990….
Continue readingThe Betrayal of History
A History of US by Joy Hakim Oxford University Press, 10 volumes pp., $10.95 each (paper) Build Our Nation Houghton Mifflin, 704 pp., $38.34 America’s Story Harcourt Brace, 718 pp., $36.96 Our United States Silver Burdett Ginn, 656 pp., $39.00 United States: Adventures in Time and Space Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, 765 pp., $51.96 1. Columbia University Professor…
Continue readingItaly: The Convulsions of Normalcy
1. Like a snake trying to shed its skin, Italy has been making convulsive efforts for the last few years to shake off its old political system and become a “normal” democracy, one in which the alternation of government and opposition is an ordinary, unremarkable occurrence. With the victory of a broad center-left coalition in…
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