The New York Times
Italy’s Moment of Decision
The fact that Italy is about to elect its 59th government since World War II is regarded with almost complete indifference in the United States. Since the end of the cold war and the dissolution of the Italian Communist Party, Italy has virtually disappeared from the radar screen of American foreign policy. But the potential…
Continue readingNew Attention for the Idea That Abortion Averts Crime
In the last several years, many causes have been enthusiastically advanced to explain the dramatic drop in crime in the United States over the past decade: innovative policing, tougher sentencing laws, the waning of the crack epidemic, better enforcement of gun laws and an improvement in the economy. Many scholars have leaped to promote a…
Continue readingProspecting For Truth In the Ore Of Memory
When Alessandro Portelli was doing an oral history of a small working-class Italian city in the 1970’s, he became puzzled when his subjects repeatedly made factual errors or even related events that had never happened. For instance, when talking about the death of a worker named Luigi Trastulli, who had been killed in a clash…
Continue readingThe Original Spin Doctor
Niccolo’s Smile A Biography of Machiavelli. By Maurizio Viroli. Translated by Antony Shugaar. 271 pp. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $25. Although Niccolo Rated R Machiavelli was largely ignored during his own lifetime and vilified after his death, his time appears to have come (or to have come again). Now that the cold war…
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