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Just over 10 years ago, Giada De Laurentiis was roaring into her 40s and had already tasted impressive success. She’d won an Emmy for her first Food Network series, Everyday Italian (followed by two more for Giada Entertains last year), and penned five bestselling cookbooks. “I started getting really busy,” says De Laurentiis. American audiences co...

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Giorgio Faletti was a multitalented artist: a gifted crime novelist, an inspired singer-songwriter, a stand-up comedian, and an actor who added dramatic dimensions to his onscreen persona.  The adventurous storyteller died of lung cancer in 2014 in Turin, at age 63 on July 4, America’s Independence Day anniversary. It was just a coincidence, yet th...

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Laura Lazzaroni is a veteran journalist, food writer and baker who has become an expert at seeking out tastemakers, from her years in New York for La Repubblica’s D magazine, to her position as Features Director of L’Uomo Vogue to co-directing the launch of the Italian edition of Food & Wine magazine, Lazzaroni has had years to fine-tune her palett...

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The eight-part Italian miniseries, The War Is Over, airing on MHz Choice is so moving that it compelled me to dig deeper. The closing credits note that the narrative was adapted from a book, The Children of Selvino: Journey to the Promised Land, by Aharon Megged. Was the TV series faithful to the book? I wanted to find out. The fictional characters...

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In contrast to their present-day placement at the conservative end of the political spectrum, Italian Americans once played an under-appreciated role in the “Old Left” progressive movement. Such was the thrust of a recent presentation by Dr. Gerald Meyer, author of Vito Marcantonio: Radical Politician (1902-1954) to the New Haven Public Library. Th...

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Ryan Calabretta-Sajder, assistant professor of Italian, recently co-edited Italian Americans on Screen: Challenging the Past, Re-Theorizing the Future, with Alan Gravano (Lexington Books, 2021). The edited collection reconsiders Robert Casillo's definition of Italian-American cinema as "appl[ying] to works by Italian-American directors who treat It...

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When science writer and Puget Sound resident Eric Scigliano was commissioned to write a book about climate change, he was excited to have the opportunity to travel to Alaska. His research would take him to a remote spot on the west coast where the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers flow into the Bering Sea, which is one of the largest deltas in the world,...

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"Dancing with the Devil: Life and Death in the Occult": a brilliant testimony of the Lord's miracles and the never-ending guidance He blesses upon those who put their faith in Him. "Dancing with the Devil: Life and Death in the Occult" is the creation of published author Norina D'Aloiso Owens, a retired senior executive assistant to the Los Angeles...

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IMAGINE THIS: In 1840, 37 immigrants came from Italy to the United States. In 1907 — the year in which novelist Vincent Panella’s latest work, Sicilian Dreams, is set, 285,731 did so — the greatest number in history. Such an explosion of dreamers was eager to reboot here in America, among them, Panella’s family. Panella lives up on Augur Hole Road,...

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Wendy Pojmann wasn’t planning on writing an entire book about espresso. In fact, she was in Italy for something entirely different — researching the history of Italian women in the Cold War at the Central Archives of the State in Rome. That’s when she stumbled on a great idea. “I was engaged in the conversation about espresso with the barista there...

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