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Vasco Rossi’s Modena Park concert: the world’s biggest live rock concert ever – in my hometown. Who’s that guy that comes from the farm?
Vasco Rossi’s Modena Park means 220.000 paying spectators at the concert. Is this a modern-day Woodstock or just a megalomaniac product? Is the rebellious spirit of Woodstock still here or are the children-parents-grandparents singing al... -
Mafia Republic, a true crime book by J. Dickie – review
Mafia Republic: Italy's Criminal Curse. Cosa Nostra, 'ndrangheta and Camorra from 1946 to the Present by John DickieMy rating: 5 of 5 stars ... a wise traveller should bring this book with him on an Italian holiday and read it while tann... -
Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley (1958): Trump, Berlusconi and Brexit were already scaringly there
The essay Brave New World Revisited is an astonishing prediction of the XXI century's shrinking democracy in the West. Here is an annotated long extract I edited as part of my research work for Silvio Berlusconi's Italy. In times of... -
Clean Hands’ 25th anniversary: and they lived corruptly ever after
1992 is modern Italy’s D-year. It is the time of the death of the decadent First Republic and the birth of the more degenerate Second one, which is probably about to end these days. It is the year of Mani Pulite (Clean Hands, or Tangento... -
Who killed Giulio Regeni?
Of Arab Springs turned dictatorships, state tortures and murders, commercial bonds over human life: one year after, we don’t have to live and let Giulio die. Shocked, outraged, bewildered, overwhelmed: that’s how I feel today, on the six... -
“Theirs is a cultural richness like no other”: Italy’s earthquakes and the loss of great human fabric
On October 30, 2016 another tremendous earthquake hit central Italy again, the greatest one in the last decades of a series that started in August, killed almost 300 people and destroyed the cultural treasures of the medieval small towns... -
29 Settembre: happy birthday to Modena ‘beat’ music capital
When the folk revival and then the rock revolution of the 60s arrived in Italy, it landed in Modena. Amid Ferrari and Maserati cars, balsamic vinegar producers, tortellini restaurants and small industrial enterprises scattered around the... -
My top ten non-fiction books about today’s Italy (in English) – and a modest picture of the country
My top ten books are a virtual guided tour that wants to take you to the heart and the soul of what may seem like the most European of countries. It’s a voyage, sometimes dark and sometimes funny, throughout “Good Italy” and “Bad Italy”,... -
Education in Italy (part two): the foul play of Berlusconi’s and Renzi’s reforms
In Education in Italy part one I describe the decline of the Italian Education system since the beginning of the new century and the birth of the scuola/azienda, of the student/customer and of the consumers’ school, with its parallel dow... -
Education in Italy (part one): Nothing worth Teaching can be Taught?
Education in Italy: Nothing worth Teaching can be Taught? In Education in Italy part one I’ll describe the decline of the Italian Education system since the beginning of the new century and the birth of the scuola/azienda, of the student...
