The Italian Witch Trial

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...

A Matter of Perspective

When our Institute published its amazing magazine, The Italic Way, one of the highlights, oddly, was a two-page section where it displayed short obits of major achievers both in America and even around the world. Mario Pasin Far from being morbid, these tributes made...

Before Ukraine

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...

Untaught Lessons

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...

A Genius in Our Disservice

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...

Into Thin Air

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...