On April 17, 1917, the United States entered World War I, already three years in progress. The U.S. Public Broadcasting Service’s “American Experience” series marked the centenary with a three-part series entitled “The Great War,” kicking off 18 months of scrutiny of a forgotten war. For most Americans, the war is little more than the answer to an exam question about the origins of World … Continue reading Lost Opportunity

During my college years I invited a boy whom I had been sporadically dating to spend a weekend with my family on Boston’s north shore. I wasn’t sure how it would go. He, Chuck, was a New Yorker, a breed viewed with suspicion by mid-westerners like my family. Chuck was also a law student, and I cringed knowing my father — the anti-medical malpractice crusader … Continue reading Behind the Plates

I’m looking forward to going back to Pakistan in a few days. When told, most people usually ask why I would go there once, much less several times. They assume that any “-stan” looks like a Star Wars desert and combines the worst of Saudi Arabia, Iran and wherever it was Genghis Khan came from. News about Pakistani terrorism, corruption and the country’s hyperactive military … Continue reading Again and Again

My childhood Christmases were of the straight-up, Anglo Saxon-Midwest kind. But with a few Italian touches. There was the panettone we ate every year, sent by a colleague of my father’s from Bergamo. Despite the yards of twine and metal and wax seals that gave it a papal look, the blue and white Motta box arrived battered after its sea voyage. Along with the misshapen Italian Christmas … Continue reading Once Upon a Christmas

Every day at Milan’s Central Station, thousands of travelers climb stairs, check signboards, and search for track numbers. They’ll have a hard time finding Track 21 and they’re lucky it’s been inactive for years. Track 21 is hidden away on a lower level of the station. Its location made it easier to load the mail cars the unseen track was intended for. During World War … Continue reading It’s All About Alfie

I’m just back from a week driving around northern France, where a century ago — Oct. 26, 1916 — French troops recaptured Fort Douaumont to end the nine-month Battle of Verdun, World War I’s longest and deadliest battle. It began in February, when German troops attacked the ring of forts defending Verdun and the Meuse River. An estimated 180,000 to 200,000 troops died in the … Continue reading Bled White

I’ve noticed that shamers come out in droves whenever a woman who writes about balancing work and household demands is found to have help at home. She’s attacked for hiring someone to do what women have traditionally done — wash, scrub, change diapers, and so on. She’s accused of being a cop-out, a half-woman or an exploiter of labor. Once upon a time, I might … Continue reading A Two-Way Street

“Gomorra,” the three-year-old Italian television crime drama based on Roberto Saviano’s 2009 book about the Naples organized crime group, the Camorra, recently aired to American audiences at the Sundance Festival. The Economist gave the series a rave review, comparing it in spirit to “The Sopranos” and “The Wire,” American-made dramas hailed as two of the grittiest crime shows ever made. It also repeated the romantic, misinformed … Continue reading Underworld Chains

My research into Woodrow Wilson and the four-way 1912 presidential campaign for a Youtube channel dedicated to World War I coincided with both the Republican and Democratic conventions. It is an election worth remembering. Former President Theodore Roosevelt, frustrated with incumbent William Howard Taft, quit the Republican Party to form the Progressive Party -unofficially known as “Bull Moose” because Roosevelt said he was as tough … Continue reading Irony Indeed

Probably not since the tumultuous 1930s have there been weeks like the last few, packed with events that make us wonder if the world we know is turning upside down. In dizzying succession came mass a murder in Orlando, the assassination of British PM Jo Cox, the slaying of popular Pakistani Sufi singer Amjad Sabri in Karachi, and the taking of 25 hostages by a … Continue reading Summer, Ascending