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In Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the street names flow like the alphabet, starting with Ash, Box, then Clay and carrying on until Oak. On Huron Street, I came across Archestratus Books & Food, one of New York City’s coziest spots for daydreaming about food. I find large bookstores with general cookbook sections overwhelming. Vintage cookbook stores can fee...

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Congratulations to NIAF Member, novelist and Ambassador magazine’s wine columnist Dick Rosano for his latest novel Crossroads of the Mediterranean. The second of a two-part historical fiction series about Sicily, it takes the reader on a journey through time, from the volcanic origins of the island to the era of the Roman Empire. It chronicles the...

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When a reporter from the magazine Education Week put together a profile on my involvement in the movement to better America’s schools, a detractor observed, “Nobody’s ever called her subtle.” And that’s just fine. I’m full-blooded Italian; we don’t do subtle. For decades, I’ve been in the mix—as a student, as a parent, as a reformer, and sure, as a...

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Giulio Andreotti was Prime Minister in the years of national solidarity, economic crisis and terrorism, culminating in the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro. In the following decade his political activity took on a decisive international connotation, with the appointment as President of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chamber and then, with t...

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Dream Big Dream Small is Elissa Ruffino’s first children’s book.  A longtime public relations and communications specialist in Washington, DC, Ruffino currently is an adjunct faculty member at Marymount University School of Business and Technology and the Lutheran College Washington Semester program.  The book for children ages 3 to 10 is published...

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Marisa Tomei is lending her voice for Elena Ferrante's upcoming novel, The Lying Life of Adults. The Academy-Award winning actress is making her debut in the audiobook world with the narration of the novel set to be released on Sept. 1, it was announced Monday. Tomei describes recording Ferrante's audiobook as “very emotional at times."  "As a devo...

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Why is it, wonders a character in Elena Ferrante’s new novel, “The Lying Life of Adults,” that when talking about sex, one adjective will never suffice? “Why does it take many — embarrassing, bland, tragic, happy, pleasant, repulsive — and never one at a time but all together?” I can think of one word copious enough. The name Ferrante — the pseudon...

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‘Florence is a very noir city,” a film-maker once told me 10 years ago, on learning that I wrote thrillers set there. (The sixth in my Florentine detective series, The Viper, is out now.) We were looking down on lovely Piazza Santa Croce, scene of a thousand years of bloody jousts and tournaments and the staggeringly violent Florentine football, Ca...

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There’s something surreal about talking to someone who’s been to space. Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti might be at home in Cologne while I’m Zooming her from London – but there’s still an awareness: those eyes have seen what only a handful of people will ever see. Those hands have been without gravity travelling at 28,000 kilometres an ho...

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Peter Boggia is a vintage European motorcycle mechanic. He makes a living with his hands and his intellect, physically and mentally unpacking, investigating, and reassembling the intricate engineering of masterworks from Ducati, BMW, Moto Guzzi and more. People from all around New York come to Peter’s Brooklyn shop, Moto Borgotaro, in tribute to hi...

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