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Joey Baldino, the South Philly-bred chef famed for Palizzi Social Club and Zeppoli, is releasing his first cookbook. Dinner at the Club: 100 Years of Stories and Recipes from South Philly’s Palizzi Social Club will feature recipes from the nationally acclaimed members-only restaurant, tucked into a South Philly rowhouse at 1408 S. 12th Street. The...

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The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is not a real place. We should say that first. You’d be forgiven for thinking that it is, and you wouldn’t be alone. It was invented in Giorgio Bassani’s 1962 historical novel of the same name, and in the 1970 Oscar-winning movie adaptation. It is a place of young love, refuge, and tennis, a place so carefully and l...

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DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, editor of the website TV Worth Watching, sitting in for Terry Gross. This week marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Mario Puzo's "The Godfather." A new edition has just been released with an introduction by Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola and Puzo co-wrote the screenplays for...

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In his 1956 book “In the Winter of Cities,” Tennessee Williams printed a small and exquisite poem titled “Little Horse,” a tribute to his lover Frank Merlo. This poem ends: "Mignon he is or mignonette avec les yeux plus grands que lui. My name for him is Little Horse. I wish he had a name for me." Williams and Merlo were together from roughly 1947...

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For Leo Marino, author of The House on Greene Street: Life and Times of a First Generation Italian American, compiling this first book was for his family. “This started 20 years ago,” says Marino, a Branford resident. “My brother and I talked about our ancestry. This was before the days of ancestry.com.” The family research took several trips to It...

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s hand-painted sign, taped to the window of his office at City Lights, overlooking Columbus Avenue, reads: “OPEN DOOR.” That all-inclusive ethos, which has guided the San Francisco bookstore since Ferlinghetti co-founded it in 1953, will be fully evident when the shop hosts an open house on March 24 to celebrate Ferlinghetti’s...

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The Italian title of this book – a tossed salad of information, anecdote, and reflection, delightful and infuriating like its author – is Divagazioni Rossiniane. Divagazione means digression or detour. It’s exactly the right title, and the book could perfectly well have been published in English as “Rossinian Digressions” – and yet “A Life with Ros...

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In the late 1960s, Mario Puzo retreated to the basement nook that served as his office to work on a new book. The broom-closet-like space beneath his Long Island house had enough room for a desk, a typewriter and little more. The basement also held a pool table, and while Puzo typed away, his five children would come down and play loud games, forci...

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Thursday, 03/14/2019 - 6:30pm EST. Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, 4 West 12th Street, New York, NY 10011-8604. On the occasion of the publication of: Un biculturalismo negato. La letteratura "italiana" negli Stati Uniti (2018, Franco Cesati Editore) by Anthony Julian Tamburri, Dean, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, CUNY,...

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Katie Parla’s grandmother had told her that their family was from Naples. So when Parla moved to Rome in 2003, she took trips south to explore the city of her ancestors. She became convinced after several trips that the connection she felt to sprawling, robust, unique Naples was in her blood. Then, after her grandmother passed, Parla learned she wa...

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