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

Whether expatriates or tourists, few have come to Italy and not wondered at some point about the country’s wasted potential. With its enviable climate, historic culture, creative people, and key role in the European Union, why is Italy repeatedly perceived as falling short of fulfilling its considerable national potential? Roger Abravanel, a former consultant for multinational McKinsey & Company who came to Milan in 1968 … Continue reading Demerits

In love with Italy and its happy-go-lucky natives, good food, beautiful monuments and art? See “Videocracy.” And weep. Produced by 32-year-old Erik Gandini, an Italian filmmaker who lives in Sweden, the documentary won top honors in its category at the Toronto Film Festival. How it fared in Italy is another matter. The film, which focuses on the country’s obsession with TV and Prime Minster Silvio … Continue reading Videocracy

Universally described as “winsome,” “witty” or “like Wodehouse,” Tad Friend’s book instead brought to mind a scene in the BBC’s dramatization of the John Le Carrè books in which Alec Guinness plays spy George Smiley. Stepping in to a younger colleague’s flashy red sports car, Smiley/Guinness says “What an appalling little car!” What an appalling little book. If it is wit, it is the college … Continue reading Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor

In a recent article in the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, columnist Ernesto Galli della Loggia encouraged legislative changes that would streamline Italy’s naturalization procedures. As part of a proposed law, the citizenship process could take five years instead of the current 10, so long as adult applicants proved a working knowledge of Italian and of “civil life in Italy and the constitution.” At the same … Continue reading Quiz Show

How does Nick Hornby do it? Take a pretentious blogger geek, an almost-famous, now forgotten rock star with children scattered across two continents, a depressed seaside British town and a woman who has a weakness for the first two and make you love them all. The slacker theme, the mature-talking six year-old and the music geek we have seen before in “High Fidelity” and “About … Continue reading Juliet, Naked