Latest work
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Rocky
Read more: RockyBloodied but unbowed. Abroken face is no joke, particularly among Italian men. The Anglo-American movie legacy of fistfights, gunslingers, pub brutes and pummeled boxers is mesmerizing in part because Italians usually stop short of physical violence. Muss and fuss matter enough not to disturb. Looks and grooming are not only…
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Slut-chic
Read more: Slut-chicStrip-club chic promotes sluts, whores and philanderers. Nuclear submarines and an outspoken prime minister helped me fall for the New Zealander who lived on Via del Panico. The prime minister was David Lange. His “mouse-that-roared” refusal to allow U.S. nuclear submarines to dock in New Zealand ports exasperated American President…
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The shattered game
Read more: The shattered gameRemnants of an Army, by Elizabeth Butler: The British in retreat, 1842. For most of the 19th century, Afghanistan was a pawn for the British and Russian empires. “The Great Game,” it was called, with diplomatic bluster and military barrages designed to keep Central Asia constantly on edge. The two-century…
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Pinups
Read more: PinupsThe Deco-rich French liner “Normandie,” launched in 1935. Ocean liners and not girls were the pinups of my youth. When dinosaurs shrank, big ships replaced them. Familiarity helped. My mother feared flying. Off we went to Genoa, Naples, Le Havre, Southampton. Down to the sea in ships, devoured by first…
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Water
Read more: WaterBagarre in aula: More parliamentary noise. Relationships, observes novelist Philip Roth, are “instinctively strategic.” So is Italy, which is a tangle of them. Afloat in a Saragossa Sea of caprice, Italy immobilizes change by howling at it. The volume is paralyzing. A microscopic case in point comes from a recent…
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Presto
Read more: PrestoThe army bought in. Let’s begin with instant coffee. “Presto,” an Italian word, met “instant,” its American counterpart. Poof, magic. No more beans. Instant’s 20th-century high priest was George Constant Louis Washington, a U.S. citizen by way of Brussels, London and Brooklyn. He rustled cattle in Guatemala before his big…
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