here are people who use the Bible as an oracle, opening it at random to find illumination when needed. Lately, I have found Tony Judt’s masterful study “Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945” useful this way. No matter which of its 800 pages I open, I find insight. The Greek debt crisis? The British election? Tony has the answer. The other day he helped … Continue reading Quaking

Last night I went to a cocktail party for Imarika, my friendly corner dress shop. The Bevilacqua family who owns Imarika invited clients, designers, friends and family for an evening of food and jazz at Milan’s Villa Necchi-Campiglio. Imarika entered my life about 20 years ago. A few stolen minutes at their windows were contact with the store of my dreams. Its minimalist concrete and glass … Continue reading The Store

I finally read “Eat Pray Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert. As a colonial fantasy about Italy, it is no better or worse than any other of its genre. Yes, you heard that: Colonial Fantasy. Gilbert and others like her — middle-aged American women with failed relationships — have more in common with the Foreign Legion volunteer or East India Company agent than you think. Both escape … Continue reading Taking Italy

Economist Andrea Ichino is the co-author, with Albert Alesina of “L’Italia Fatta in Casa,” which attempts to assess Italy’s gross national product in terms of the value of goods and services produced in the home and family context, outside the traditional confines of the industrial marketplace. For example, most Italian child and elderly care is managed by families instead of being farmed out to third-person … Continue reading Family Values

If you didn’t know the story would end so shockingly, you might call Elon’s book a joy. From the start, when philosopher Moses Mendelssohn enters Berlin in 1743 through the gate reserved for Jews, until Hannah Arendt flees the city by train 1932, Elon’s fine work — his last; the Israeli writer died in 2009 — reads like a Balzac novel. He follows Jews from … Continue reading The Pity of It All: A Portrait of Jews in Germany 1743-1933

In 2007, Gian Antonio Stella and Sergio Rizzo’s denunciation of Italian pork barrel politics La casta. Così i politici italiani sono diventati intoccabili (“The Caste. How Italian Politicians Became Untouchable”) sold more than a million copies in a country where 10,000 is considered respectable and 100,000 a howling success. While the sales figures may have been a novelty, the success of the “The Cast” merely confirmed Stella’s … Continue reading The Global Stink

Find this book on display and the title alone might make you want to rush to the cashier. Author Green is not only Chairman of HSBC (the venerable Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation, the world’s largest banking group) but also an ordained Anglican minister. “Ah hah,” you say as you gobble up early mouthfuls of Teilhard de Chardin. “Hmm,” comes to your lips as you … Continue reading Good Value: Reflections on Money, Morality, and an Uncertain World

What is it about Sweden? If Denmark is rotten, one wonders what Shakespeare would have called the trafficking of immigrant women and the corrupt politicians who people Stieg Larsson’s trilogy and Henning Mankel’s crime novel “Sidetracked” (named Sweden’s Best Crime Novel in 1997). “Sidetracked” was my first encounter with Mankel and detective Kurt Wallander. It was a lucky one. After witnessing a girl set herself … Continue reading Sidetracked

One of the more successful anti-Mafia organizations in Italy is called Libera, nome i numeri. The title is a reference to names and numbers aligned against omertà, that mixture of pride and withheld information that traditionally maintains Mafia power. A recent book by Harvard and University of Bologna economists Alberto Alesina and Andrea Ichino could also be called “names and numbers, ” because it too provides details … Continue reading Naming Names

Not all Italians are glued to the Berlusconi soap opera, especially those in his own government. Carefully-coordinated visits to their leader in the hospital after a dramatic attack looked less like consolation than positioning for the day the Berlusconi show is cancelled or goes off the air. In an acid political climate, Renato Brunetta, the public administration minister, jousts publicly with Giulio Tremonti, the finance … Continue reading Fini’s Moves