by John Mancini | Jun 2, 2026 | Uncategorized
Today is a national holiday in Italy, la Festa della Repubblica, celebrating the referendum in 1946 that dumped the Savoy monarchy and made Italy a republic. It was a close vote—54% for a Republic, 46% for Monarchy—but not without irregularities. Many...
by John Mancini | May 17, 2026 | Uncategorized
America is gearing up to host the World Cup of Soccer next month. Not exactly a sport that gets Americans excited, although an American team will be showing its stuff. Besides, hyphenated Americans can cheer on their ancestral homelands. Alas, Italy will...
by John Mancini | May 11, 2026 | Uncategorized
Today marks the anniversary of Garibaldi’s landing in Bourbon Sicily in 1860 with his 1,000 Redshirts. That bold adventure led to the addition of southern Italy and Sicily to what would become the Kingdom of Italy nine months later. It was a remarkable course of...
by John Mancini | May 4, 2026 | Uncategorized
With fictional Vice President Giannelli In the political thriller Seven Days in May, a novel published in 1962, the U.S. Vice President was named Giannelli. He had no first name nor was his character developed in either the book or the 1964 movie version with...
by John Mancini | Apr 26, 2026 | Uncategorized
There have been 25 Medal of Honor winners with Italian roots. The most recent one is David Bellavia of Buffalo, NY. He’s been honored at the White House by President Trump and by the Gary Sinise Foundation, a nonprofit for veterans, launched by that...
by John Mancini | Apr 19, 2026 | Uncategorized
Tuesday will be the 2,779th birthday of Rome. But only a few Italic Institute members will be celebrating. The day will be acknowledged in Rome and probably in most Latin language classes around the USA. But it’s a pity that Italian Americans have no...
by John Mancini | Apr 13, 2026 | Uncategorized
The two oldest man-made objects standing outdoors in our country are from Italy. Balbo Column, Chicago One is the Balbo Column in Chicago, a gift from Mussolini to commemorate the mass flight across the Atlantic by 24 Italian seaplanes in 1933. The other,...
by John Mancini | Apr 6, 2026 | Uncategorized
Today is celebrated as Little Easter in Italy, a recovery from yesterday’s religious blow-out. For those of you who think that Catholicism saved the ancient Italic people from their pagan ways, think again. It’s a question of theory vs practice. Peter and Paul...
by John Mancini | Mar 29, 2026 | Uncategorized
Now that a statue of Columbus adorns the White House grounds, thanks to a non-Italic president, our community leaders should take the hint and redouble their efforts to restore the Great Navigator’s place in history. However, I fear that many who speak for our...
by John Mancini | Mar 22, 2026 | Uncategorized
Why Italians like old things has fascinated me since I learned that the oldest bank in the world is in Italy. Banca Monte dei Paschi was founded in 1472 in Siena. Today, it’s not only still in business but is Italy’s 3rd largest bank. Banca Monte dei...
by John Mancini | Mar 15, 2026 | Uncategorized
This week the Irish celebrate an Italic saint while we celebrate a Jewish one. Modern Romanophiles still celebrate Matronalia, motherhood & feminism The Roman St. Patrick not only led the conversion of heathen Celts but taught them to read and write in...
by John Mancini | Mar 8, 2026 | Uncategorized
So, President Trump wants to place a statue of Columbus on White House grounds. It’s no secret that Trump wants to restore America’s traditional heroes and the Great Navigator not only opened the New World but propelled Western Civilization to global leadership....
by John Mancini | Mar 1, 2026 | Uncategorized
The Jews are truly blessed. Last September, the National Endowment for the Humanities, a government funded honeypot, awarded the Jewish nonprofit Tikvah $10.4 million to inform Americans how wonderful the People of the Book are. It was the largest gift in...
by John Mancini | Feb 22, 2026 | Uncategorized
It was a Roman who penned the words everyone should live by: Mens Sana in Corpore Sano (“A sound mind in a healthy body”). The Greeks invented the 4-year Olympics but the Romans made sports a daily competition. When Italic settlers colonized...
by John Mancini | Feb 15, 2026 | Uncategorized
Forget Presidents’ Day! The day we should be celebrating is February 15th; the day navigator Amerigo Vespucci took command of a Portuguese ship in 1502 and added two new continents to the world map. Amerigo Vespucci 1454-1512, aged 57 We all know the story of...
by John Mancini | Feb 8, 2026 | Uncategorized
Last October, the Commission for Social Justice, an arm of the Sons and Daughters of Italy, tried to distribute positive image material to New York City libraries in celebration of Italian History Month. Two Manhattan libraries considered the material...
by John Mancini | Feb 1, 2026 | Uncategorized
The Giglio Festival Yesterday I read about an Italian American neighborhood that was the original Little Italy in New York City. No, not Mulberry Street in lower Manhattan but East Harlem above 96th Street. Today, both those areas are “Italian” by the skin of their...
by John Mancini | Jan 26, 2026 | Uncategorized
The Wall Street Journal had an article on “The Distortion of American Studies,” a report on how academia accentuates the negative in American history. They referred to issues of American Quarterly magazine published by Johns Hopkins University, considered the...
by John Mancini | Jan 18, 2026 | Uncategorized
L. Munatius Plancus In my father’s hometown of Gaeta (Lazio), Italy there stands the tomb of Lucius Munatius Plancus (c. 87 BC – c. 15 BC), a Roman soldier and politician who allied himself with both Julius Caesar and his successor Octavian. In fact, it was...
by John Mancini | Jan 12, 2026 | Uncategorized
Dr. Joseph Giordano, the man credited with saving President Ronald Reagan’s life on the day he was shot in 1981, passed away last June at age 84. Dr. Giordano was among the many ethnic Italians that stand out in history. You find them in the most unlikely...
by John Mancini | Jan 5, 2026 | Uncategorized
Italic Studies is not my whole life, only part. But sometimes life draws you back to it. Just today, a young nephew and I walked past a branch of the Bank of America. As an Italian American college student taking a history course I wondered if he knew who...
by John Mancini | Dec 31, 2025 | Uncategorized
Christmas and New Year’s Day were handed down to us centuries ago. Their message is actually the same—a new start. Christianity was launched with the birth of a child and January 1st opens a new year. Both events coincide for a practical rather than a...
by John Mancini | Dec 24, 2025 | Uncategorized
Salvatore Guaragna, Master of Melodies He had more songs on radio’s Your Hit Parade than Irving Berlin (42 vs. 33). During his long career he wrote 500 songs, scored 300 movies, and even scored 100 of the animated Looney Tunes we watched as kids. He won...
by John Mancini | Dec 14, 2025 | Uncategorized
Marconi pioneered wi-fi December was a lucky month for inventor Guglielmo Marconi. On 12 December 1901 he proved that wireless transmission—what we call Wi-Fi today—was possible across long distances. What’s more, he demonstrated that despite the curvature...
by John Mancini | Dec 7, 2025 | Uncategorized
There are only two feature films that reflect negatively on Somalis: Black Hawk Down and Captain Phillips. The former deals with the U.S. involvement in a Somalia civil war (1992), the latter about Somali pirates hijacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea in...
by John Mancini | Nov 30, 2025 | Uncategorized
The founding mission of the Italic Institute in 1987 was to restore a classical perspective to the Italian heritage. To that end we used Italic in our corporate documents. Italic was directly from the Latin Italicus, the name of an inhabitant of ancient...
by John Mancini | Nov 23, 2025 | Uncategorized
Filmmaker Ken Burns has contributed a body of work documenting the great American experiment, some 40 films, offered free to the American people via PBS. He has educated viewers on subjects as diverse as the history of the Brooklyn Bridge to the Vietnam War. His...
by John Mancini | Nov 16, 2025 | Uncategorized
There’s been much media coverage of the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo this month. The billion-dollar colossus houses the largest collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts ever assembled including all of King Tut’s burial treasures. Giovanni...
by John Mancini | Nov 9, 2025 | Uncategorized
The election of Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New York is a giant step for South Asians and Muslims in America. It is also a victory for Socialism, that failed economic system that has seduced generations of dreamers since Karl Marx. The promise of Socialism is to...
by John Mancini | Nov 2, 2025 | Uncategorized
There was an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal about how the various subcultures in the U.S. affect economic success. Maybe there’s nothing new here that common sense doesn’t reveal every day. The bulk of the references in the article were to Thomas...
by John Mancini | Oct 26, 2025 | Uncategorized
The mean-looking guy in front is Emperor Caracalla Among the traits we inherited from our Roman ancestors was a grasp of reality. It’s not always pretty but it has made us a very pragmatic people. We don’t often mince words or suffer fools. It may be...
by John Mancini | Oct 19, 2025 | Uncategorized
Like many Americans I was addicted to the 1959 series The Untouchables, aka “cops & wops” which ran to 1963. And like a tag team bout, that series spawned a nationally televised reality show in 1964 with mobster Joe Valachi testifying before a Senate committee on...
by John Mancini | Oct 12, 2025 | Uncategorized
President’s Trump’s proclamation for Columbus Day 2025 makes no mention of Indigenous peoples and only a sentence honoring Italian Americans. That’s about the right mix. Columbus Day was and always should be about 1492 and the man who bet his life on sailing...
by John Mancini | Oct 5, 2025 | Uncategorized
Last Friday some 400,000 Italians took to the streets in support of the Palestinians in war-torn Gaza. Even though a resolution of the horrific carnage may be in the offing many Italians were riled up by Israelis stopping a flotilla of private yachts heading there...
by John Mancini | Sep 28, 2025 | Uncategorized
President Trump is relying on two Italian Americans this week, one in science and the other in law. Dr. Andrea Baccarelli The big news item this week is about the safety of acetaminophen (aka Tylenol) taken during pregnancy for pain and fever. Trump’s team, led by...
by John Mancini | Sep 21, 2025 | Uncategorized
The real Rocky with Pres. Eisenhower Today is the 70th anniversary of the Rocky Marciano-Archie Moore fight of 1955. It was Rocky Marciano’s last bout and final knock-out of an opponent. He retired the following year with a 49-0 record, 43 of which were...
by John Mancini | Sep 16, 2025 | Uncategorized
Lately, I’ve been editing videos made during the Institute’s previous thirty-eight years. We made most of them under our Project Italia label which you can see on our homepage (italic.org) under Galleria. We made one on the Aurora Youth Program but it didn’t quite...
by John Mancini | Sep 7, 2025 | Uncategorized
2Lt. Pasquale (Pat) Aceto For those of you who receive our free newsletter (Update) via snail-mail, you may recall a story we did in April, 2024 on 2Lt Pasquale (Pat) Aceto who died during the Second World War. Lt. Aceto is a great uncle of our Design Editor...
by John Mancini | Aug 31, 2025 | Uncategorized
Is there such a thing as “affordable housing?” I’ve written before about how the 1965 law that launched chain migration, which allows legal immigrants to invite whole family clans to the U.S., has increased demand for housing. Metropolitan areas are especially...
by John Mancini | Aug 24, 2025 | Uncategorized
The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox is a new cable movie dramatizing the tortuous persecution of an American student in Italy that began in 2007. It took a full eight years for the Italian justice system to right its terrible wrong. Amanda Knox (right) and her...
by John Mancini | Aug 17, 2025 | Uncategorized
The old saw is that history repeats itself. Not exactly, suggested Neapolitan scholar Giambattista Vico (1668-1744). It’s more like a spiral: it develops or moves through repetitions, much like a spiral staircase ascends and descends the same space but at...
by John Mancini | Aug 10, 2025 | Uncategorized
It was the 14th day of August in 1480 that Western Europe got another lesson in Islamic studies. On that day 813 Italians were beheaded by Turkish Muslims in their own city of Otranto on the southern most tip of the Puglia Region. History has been exceptionally...
by John Mancini | Aug 3, 2025 | Uncategorized
The American Film Institute (AFI) honored Francis Ford Coppola last April, and I caught a rebroadcast last week. The filmmaker was lauded to the heavens for works as diverse as Peggy Sue Got Married to The Cotton Club and Apocalypse Now. But the...
by John Mancini | Jul 28, 2025 | Uncategorized
Edmund Cantilli (1927-2025) Maybe it was intuition, perhaps just coincidence. This morning, I stumbled onto the obituary of Edmund Cantilli, a former safety engineer with the NY/NJ Port Authority and aeronautical safety expert. Edmund was also an early member of the...
by John Mancini | Jul 20, 2025 | Uncategorized
We don’t usually associate Italians with the “winning” of the West. But some 828,000 sq. miles of middle America, known as the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, had Italian connections. The area was claimed by France starting with the voyage of Giovanni da Verrazzano in...
by John Mancini | Jul 13, 2025 | Uncategorized
My colleague Joe Graziose picks up tidbits from the internet that inform me or sometimes annoy me. Yesterday it was the latter, an homage to Arab Sicily, a period that covered 200 years (AD 827 – 1091). The conquest of Sicily by Muslims was a bloody affair and...
by John Mancini | Jul 6, 2025 | Uncategorized
Part of our mission at the Italic Institute is to monitor the various media – TV, movies, newspapers, books, et al. But watching television doesn’t mean being glued to the screen all day. Cable service comes with recording features that eliminate countless...
by John Mancini | Jun 29, 2025 | Uncategorized
The daughter of pin-up actress Jayne Mansfield thought she was Hungarian on her father’s side. She even bears the ethnic name Mariska Hargitay, and is a long-time star of TV’s Law & Order: SVU. But at age 25 she was shocked to learn that she was a Sardelli. Her...
by John Mancini | Jun 22, 2025 | Uncategorized
Stanley Tucci’s culinary tour of Italy on the National Geographic channel may depress you even if you’re impressed by his regional revelations. I’ll not get into his odd focus on the various ways Italians consume animal offal, but it’s the ethnic diversity he...
by John Mancini | Jun 15, 2025 | Uncategorized
That’s the title of a new book by Thomas Maier describing how attorney/journalist Ernest Cuneo found himself embroiled in espionage during World War II. Cuneo was a New York City native who earned his law degree at Columbia, played a little football in the NFL and...
by John Mancini | Jun 8, 2025 | Uncategorized
I just read a review in the Wall Street Journal of a new book about late actor James Gandolfini, lead star on HBO’s The Sopranos, aptly titled Gandolfini. As Tony Soprano, Mr. Gandolfini participated in a marathon defamation of Italian Americans spanning six...
by John Mancini | Jun 2, 2025 | Uncategorized
Italian Americans know precious little of their heritage except what they learned from family or the movies. Each generation becomes more ignorant than the next until our legacy becomes one of ‘cooks & crooks,’ as I have often observed. Sadly, there is no remedy...
by John Mancini | May 25, 2025 | Uncategorized
The Second World War is rightly eulogized as America’s greatest moment. Few of that generation remain with us, but we share histories of the contributions and sacrifice our own families made toward that victory. It’s been said that Italian Americans made up the...
by John Mancini | May 18, 2025 | Uncategorized
I’m about as “down home” as any professing Italian American. I was born in Brooklyn and the first in the family to go to college. My Mezzogiorno pedigree is mutt-worthy. But for the life of me I’m still stumped by the low-class mentality that still...
by John Mancini | May 12, 2025 | Uncategorized
Leo XIV, an all-Latin combo It only took four ballots to elect the first American pope. As proud as we are for that achievement, we should acknowledge that Robert (“Bob”) Prevost also has an all-Latin pedigree. His maternal side is ‘white’ Hispanic (Martinez) of...
by John Mancini | May 4, 2025 | Uncategorized
The good news is President Trump has announced that the Federal government will no longer conflate Indigenous Peoples Day with Columbus Day. The great visionary who joined two worlds in 1492 will be restored to his noble station in Federal observance. The bad news is...
by John Mancini | Apr 27, 2025 | Uncategorized
Back in the 1980s when I began to get active in Italian American affairs, I wrote a letter to Newsday, the regional newspaper of Long Island, critiquing an op-ed on Italian history. A few days later my letter was published. Shortly after, I received a...
by John Mancini | Apr 20, 2025 | Uncategorized
In the course of my self-studies one statement by historian Will Durant (Caesar and Christ) stands out. “More Christians were killed by other Christians than by the Romans.” He was referring to the systematic purge of ‘heretics’ who did not accept the...
by John Mancini | Apr 13, 2025 | Uncategorized
On schedule, ABC-TV broadcast The Ten Commandments on Saturday night for Passover. I recall seeing it for the first time in 1956 at the Loews Valencia in Jamaica, Queens (NYC). Quite a visual impact for a 9-year-old kid. Even more amazing was that I went without...
by John Mancini | Apr 6, 2025 | Uncategorized
The Romans named it Aprilis, the month when the Earth opens to produce beauty and sustenance. Like Italians, the Romans were very expressive…and practical. They called it as they saw it: Aperire means ‘to open’ in Latin (Aprire in Italian). For the...
by John Mancini | Mar 30, 2025 | Uncategorized
We all have moments in life that affect our future. It certainly happens when you find your ‘life’ partner or lose one. Having children surely puts you on a different trajectory. But sometimes a serendipitous event or an individual will present you...
by John Mancini | Mar 23, 2025 | Uncategorized
Last month, Barbara Broccoli ditched the family business. Not in agriculture but in Hollywood. The Broccoli Family was the original owner of the James Bond franchise, that action-packed series of movies regaling audiences with the exploits of fictional British spy...
by John Mancini | Mar 16, 2025 | Uncategorized
Another St. Patrick’s Day is upon us. And despite the stereotypes of leprechauns and pots’o’gold, Irish Americans will proudly show off their green and hoist a pint. Each surely aware of how their ancestors overcame oppression and famine to become a glowing...
by John Mancini | Mar 9, 2025 | Uncategorized
Every now and then our analysts look at the ‘big picture’ to determine if the Italian American community is living up to its potential. The first thing we realize is that there is no “community.” Sure we have local and national organizations, but by and large...
by John Mancini | Mar 2, 2025 | Uncategorized
Italic Studies can relate to just about anything, including current events. President Donald Trump may think his idea of securing mineral rights in Ukraine is an original way to give that embattled country an ‘unofficial’ American security guarantee from future...
by John Mancini | Feb 23, 2025 | Uncategorized
To those who are upset with the Trump Administration’s antipathy toward European leaders, count me out! I still love Italy and its people, but I’ve had too many dealings with Italian diplomats to retain any respect for them. Early on, I admired the European...
by John Mancini | Feb 16, 2025 | Uncategorized
Imagine someone so outspoken, so contrary to accepted knowledge that authorities had to gag him during his execution so he wouldn’t have the last word. His name was Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake on February 17, 1600. Before Galileo, there was outlier...
by John Mancini | Feb 9, 2025 | Uncategorized
The yellow areas promised to Italy in 1915 included the Istrian Peninsula (center) On February 10, 1947 a defeated Italy had to surrender nearly 3,000 square miles of the homeland to Yugoslavia. The Istrian peninsula had been added to Italy only three decades...
by John Mancini | Feb 2, 2025 | Uncategorized
Once upon a time, Italians were “Latins.” So were the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and even Romanians – all descended from Roman colonists who mingled with the locals. Screen idol Rudolph Valentino (1895-1926) was the poster boy for the “Latin lover” during the...
by John Mancini | Jan 26, 2025 | Uncategorized
Two weeks ago, PBS broadcast a new episode of Finding Your Roots with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. hosting. The show traces the roots and DNA of celebrities. Italian Americans Joy Behar (born Josephine Occhiuto) and Michael Imperioli were the guest...
by John Mancini | Jan 12, 2025 | Uncategorized
As President-elect Trump creates his new inner circle of Cabinet and agency officials, not all loyalists are included. Whether by their choice or his, Trump’s Italian American cohorts are out of the limelight. Mike Pompeo Mike Pompeo, Trump’s former CIA Director...
by John Mancini | Jan 5, 2025 | Uncategorized
This week I heard from three of our subscribers on what I’ll term our ethnic identity crisis. Subscriber Robert Randazzo forwarded an online essay by a filmmaker named Richard Stecz (pronunciation optional) reflecting on perverse Italian American values. Stecz...
by John Mancini | Dec 29, 2024 | Uncategorized
History is a blur to most people, but 3,000 years of Italian history is near impossible to believe. Our Institute Almanac notes that Sicily was reconquered by the Romans on December 31st, AD 535. Barbarians had been running wild over the “western” Roman Empire...
by John Mancini | Dec 22, 2024 | Uncategorized
Since childhood it was explained to us at Christmas Mass: “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered…while Quirinius was governor of Syria…all went to their own towns to be registered.” (Luke 2.1-3)....
by John Mancini | Dec 15, 2024 | Uncategorized
The cowardly assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson can be convincingly classified as the work of an anarchist. The suspect, Luigi Mangione, was found to have writings and documents evidencing that nihilistic philosophy. Mangione allegedly...
by John Mancini | Dec 8, 2024 | Uncategorized
As Columbus unified the globe, Marconi connected it. I’ve written about Guglielmo Marconi a number of times. He was truly the father of Wi-Fi (wireless-fidelity) which made possible radio, television, cellphones, and radar. This year is the 150th...
by John Mancini | Dec 1, 2024 | Uncategorized
This Irish Catholic family is an arbiter of the Italian American image. We often note how Mafia movies like The Godfather, Goodfellas, and Casino seem to run on cable television in a continuous loop. At times, you can watch any of these movies any day of the...
by John Mancini | Nov 24, 2024 | Uncategorized
The other day while watching a History Channel documentary on ancient Rome the narrator recounted how the emperors Caligula and Nero were “Italians” as opposed to the more enlightened ones such as Trajan and Hadrian who came from Spain. True enough, but both Trajan...
by John Mancini | Nov 18, 2024 | Uncategorized
He is known affectionately as Dr. NO because of his scientific research into Nitric Oxide (NO) which earned him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1998. We noted that achievement at the time in an issue of The Italic Way; but I am prompted to write about Dr. Louis...
by John Mancini | Nov 11, 2024 | Uncategorized
My grandson is preparing for his First Communion, enrolled in a CCD class. As a 7-year-old he is slowly being introduced to life’s requirements – homework, bedtime, and internet limits. To many kids nowadays religion is an option and morality a multiple...
by John Mancini | Nov 3, 2024 | Uncategorized
This past week a local school on Long Island honored the memory of cartoon illustrator Al Plastino. He was one of many Italian Americans who crafted the comic books that every boy in the country grew up with — Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, The Flash, and the...
by John Mancini | Oct 27, 2024 | Uncategorized
The other day, the cable station TCM aired The Joe Louis Story a biopic from 1953. Like The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) both the subjects of the bios were still alive at the time. In fact, Robinson played himself in the 1950 movie. The two films were tributes to...
by John Mancini | Oct 21, 2024 | Uncategorized
Luigi Cornaro 1464 – 1566 With cold, flu, and covid season upon us I thought it relevant to introduce our subscribers to Luigi Cornaro possibly the first professional dietician. Cornaro was born in 1464 in Venice and lived to be 102 years old, a feat he...
by John Mancini | Oct 13, 2024 | Uncategorized
Our troubles are over! Christopher Columbus is on his way back from being Satan Incarnate to God’s Gift—the man who unified the globe. Some Spanish researchers have analyzed the bones of the Great Navigator, interred in Seville for the past 518 years, and found...
by John Mancini | Oct 6, 2024 | Uncategorized
The current wars in the Middle East seem without any permanent solution. For the Italic people, there should always be some reflection on how our ancestors created Palestine two thousand years ago as a result of Jewish rebellions. The Romans first occupied Judea...
by John Mancini | Sep 29, 2024 | Uncategorized
Pope Pius V was born Antonio Ghislieri in Italy’s Piemonte Region. He joined the Dominican Order changing his first name to Michele. He pursued an austere life, unafraid to condemn Church abuses but defending traditional Catholic doctrine. Pope Pius V...
by John Mancini | Sep 22, 2024 | Uncategorized
For those of us who grew up in a world of Italian American music – from Guy Lombardo ringing in every New Year and TV shows hosted by Perry Como or Dean Martin- pride came in more forms than just cuisine. Sinatra was our gold standard, using the name he was born...
by John Mancini | Sep 15, 2024 | Uncategorized
Emperor Napoleon III There was never any doubt that Rome would be the capital of a reunified Italy. Just as the Jewish people in exile longed for the city of David and Solomon (“Next year in Jerusalem!”) Italian patriots of the 19th Century dreamed of restoring...
by John Mancini | Sep 8, 2024 | Uncategorized
Before there was an Italic Institute I had fun with an imaginary organization named Istituto di Past’Asciutta (ah-SHOO-tah). The name was even fun to pronounce, try it! Literally the Institute of “dried paste,” the term covered all your boxed or bagged...
by John Mancini | Sep 2, 2024 | Uncategorized
On September 3, 1943, the Kingdom of Italy signed an “armistice” with the Allies. Negotiations had been going on secretly for months with meetings in neutral Portugal by some Italian military leaders under orders of King Victor Emmanuel III. Mussolini had been...
by John Mancini | Aug 29, 2024 | Uncategorized
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” -George Orwell, from his book 1984 These words are not a riddle or an abstract concept. For those of us who take pride in the millennial contributions of Italy to...
by John Mancini | Aug 19, 2024 | Uncategorized
I wish I knew how young Italian Americans think. Admittedly, I grew up an oddball. My immigrant father spoke with a heavy accent and was raised under Fascism, coming here in 1930 at age 18. My American side was Italian American to the core: the old...
by John Mancini | Aug 12, 2024 | Uncategorized
I wonder if gunman Thomas Crooks was a pawn of the eternal Mafia as he pumped eight rounds at Donald Trump. Just wait a couple of years and some enterprising journalist or a goombah in the celebrated Witness Protection Program will reveal the true story of...
by John Mancini | Aug 4, 2024 | Uncategorized
Nothing has changed our modern world more than the insane start of the First World War in August 1914. It led directly to the Second World War, Communism, Fascism, Nazism, the Bomb, the Cold War, and some hot wars still to this day. Historians all agree that the...
by John Mancini | Jul 28, 2024 | Uncategorized
The latest groundbreaking production by the Mafia-Industrial Complex is Tulsa King, a mob series starring Sylvester Stallone. I’ll describe it as Rip van Winkle meets The Sopranos and My Cousin Vinny. Intriguing? Beside the clever combination, Tulsa King...
by John Mancini | Jul 21, 2024 | Uncategorized
My family and I spent a week on a cruise to Bermuda last week. We haven’t taken ship for over thirty years and much has changed. Ships have turned into amusement parks and dining is now an international lovefest. Bars, shopping malls, casinos, and...
by John Mancini | Jul 14, 2024 | Uncategorized
While I am on vacation, I wanted to post one of my early blogs from 2017 explaining the Italic Institute. Enjoy the summer. What makes the Italic Institute different from all other organizations? It starts with our name. We use Italic to add back the one...
by John Mancini | Jul 7, 2024 | Uncategorized
Among the film offerings during the 4th of July holiday was the Spirit of St. Louis starring Jimmy Steward as aviator Charles Lindbergh. The title referred to the name of the plane Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic. That plane wasn’t Lindbergh’s first...
by John Mancini | Jun 30, 2024 | Uncategorized
I noticed how four Italian American ladies figured in recent news stories: Jill Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Gina Raimondo, and Lisa Monaco. You may not know the latter two, but they are among the movers and shakers in Washington, DC. Pelosi saving democracy At last...
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