by Bill Dal Cerro | Jan 8, 2026 | Uncategorized
In 1995, the late Tony Bennett released Here’s to the Ladies, a tribute album to the great tunes from the American songbook made famous by female singers, from Ella Fitzgerald to Barbara Streisand. It won him a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal...
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 Bill Dal Cerro | Dec 30, 2025 | Uncategorized
A new year brings good cheer—at least, that’s everyone’s hope. Speaking of cheers, a colleague of mine pointed out a rather odd irony in Stanley Tucci’s recent series in Italy. Whenever dining with Italians, he would often use that very...
by Bill Dal Cerro | Dec 26, 2025 | Uncategorized
[It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve been on a roll this month with my observations on jazz man Vince Guaraldi and the Peanuts franchise. My last blog on the subject made it to the San Francisco Chronicle. This week the Chicago suburb newspaper Daily Herald printed my...
by Rosario Iaconis | Dec 25, 2025 | Uncategorized
America’s debts—Revolutionary and Republican—to Rome resonate 250 years after Washington’s crossing of the Delaware. To paraphrase Monty Python, “What have the Romans ever done for the American Revolution?” On the night of December 25, 1776, in the midst of a fierce...
John Mancini
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