by Rosario Iaconis | Jul 26, 2025 | Uncategorized
[I had the following letter published in the Financial Times on July 25th] Ian Thomson’s review of John Foot’s account of Italy’s anni di piombo (years of lead, as in bullets) makes for a fascinating yet chilling read (“A climate of terror and discontent.”) The...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Jul 24, 2025 | Uncategorized
In 2013, real-life celebrity couple Mark Consuelos and Kelly Ripa did a short video clip for the Funny or Die series called “Bensonhurst Spelling Bee.” It consisted of students on-stage being asked to spell “eye-talian” words...
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...
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