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...
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