Alexander Stille | The New York Review of Books

Democracy Italian Style

Alcide De Gasperi and the Christian Democrats constructed the foundations of postwar Italian politics, in which what looked like one-party rule was in fact a complex interaction between the left and the right.

Italy Reborn: From Fascism to Democracy

by Mark Gilbert

December 18, 2025 issue

Killing the Moonlight

A recent exhibition of Futurism at Italy’s national modern art museum celebrated the movement’s techno-optimism and played down its fascist roots.

August 24, 2025

Breaking the Silence in Calabria

The Good Mothers: The True Story of the Women Who Took on the World’s Most Powerful Mafia

by Alex Perry

October 24, 2019 issue

The Sins of Celibacy

The modern Catholic Church has failed to grasp what its founders understood quite well.

November 22, 2018 issue

Not So Funny

Siamo in Guerra: Per una nuova politica [We Are at War: For a New Politics]

by Gianroberto Casaleggio and Beppe Grillo

Comico e Politico: Beppe Grillo e la crisi della democrazia [The Comic and the Politician: Beppe Grillo and the Crisis of Democracy]

by Oliviero Ponte di Pino

Politica a 5 stelle: Idee, Storia e Strategie del Movimento di Grillo [Five-Star Politics: Ideas, History and Strategies of the Grillo Movement]

by Roberto Biorcio and Paolo Natale

Supernova: Com’è stato ucciso il MoVimento 5 Stelle [Supernova: How the Five Star Movement Was Killed]

by Marco Canestrari and Nicola Biondo

May 10, 2018 issue

The Last Slaves in Mauritania

Prêcher dans le désert: Islam politique et changement social en Mauritanie [Preaching in the Desert: Political Islam and Social Change in Mauritania]

by Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem

November 23, 2017 issue

The Pope Who Tried

The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe

by David I. Kertzer

April 23, 2015 issue

A Film Without a Country

Films that have won in the Best Foreign Film category at the Oscars have usually satisfied a taste for otherness. The case of Human Capital, which was Italy’s entry for this year’s Oscar but was not nominated by the Academy, may be instructive in this regard.

February 21, 2015

Dancing to Nowhere

If Marcello in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita had spent another four decades flitting about the high life of Rome he might have turned into someone like Jep Gambardella, the protagonist of Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grande Bellezza.

January 9, 2014

Italy Under a Microscope

The Vatican Diaries: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Power, Personalities and Politics at the Heart of the Catholic Church

by John Thavis

Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo

by Tim Parks

December 5, 2013 issue

From Cocaine to Fascism

Behind 1920s Italy’s official façade of bourgeois morality, Pitigrilli’s novels described a world driven by sex, power, and greed. Mussolini was a fan.

September 16, 2013

The Strange Victory of Padre Pio

Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age

by Sergio Luzzatto, translated from the Italian by Frederika Randall

October 25, 2012 issue

The Triumph of Emperor Silvio

June 10, 2010 issue

The Corrupt Reign of Emperor Silvio

Papi: Uno Scandalo Politico (Papi: A Political Scandal)

by Peter Gomez, Marco Lillo, and Marco Travaglio

Il Regalo di Berlusconi (The Gift of Berlusconi)

by Peter Gomez and Antonella Mascali

Gradisca, Presidente: Tutta la verità della escort più famosa al mondo (At Your Pleasure, Mr. President: The Whole Truth About the Most Famous Escort in the World)

by Patrizia D'Addario, with Maddalena Tulanti

Guzzanti vs Berlusconi

by Paolo Guzzanti

Videocracy

a film directed by Erik Gandini

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April 8, 2010 issue

Letter

Gianfranco Pasquino

The Triumph of Emperor Silvio

June 10, 2010 issue