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South of Rome–West of Ellis Island

March 31, 2012

Southern Italy – The Chrysalis of Western Civilization ... Diocletian’s Palace Colonnade

Tom Verso
“The Greatest Single Architectural Innovation in History” Edward A. Freeman - 1879

Southern Italy is the Chrysalis where the Mediterranean culture caterpillar transformed into the Western Civilization butterfly.

March 21, 2012

Mario ("Beddu"!) – Lifetime Vicar of the Rich and Powerful – Hammers the Italian Working Class

Tom Verso
Photographer: Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg
Head of Italy's employers' association Confindustria Emma Marcegaglia, with Italy's Prime Minister Mario Monti

OMG! When these two put their heads together – worker’s heads roll! Emma Marcegaglia: "We're in a situation now where permanent jobs no longer exist-- and we must acknowledge...

March 2, 2012

Towards an American Terroni “Education Manifesto” – i-Italy’s role (if any)

Tom Verso

So Pretty / So Witty / Not Phony / But Soooo Not Terroni .... Spare me Manzoni - Yo / Don’t yah know / American Terroni want / a South of Rome show

February 18, 2012

Sicilian Founders of Rome (revisited...again) – The Logic of Historiography (wonkish: hate philosophy?...forget-about-it!)

Tom Verso

Sicilian by nature and nurture, naturally Toynbee’s short (four-page) Annex ‘note’ “Sicilian Light on Roman Origins” in his twelve-volume opus “Study of History”,...

February 4, 2012

Guy de Maupassant’s “SICILY” – Sicilian Mosaics and Guido Education

Tom Verso
Martorana Church Mosaics - Palermo

If ever it comes to pass, that an American university or college develops a Patria Meridionale curriculum, dedicated to educating the near 17 million Americans of southern-Italian...

January 20, 2012

John Domini’s “A Tomb on the Periphery” – Sooo Not Saviano or SUNY Stony Brook!

Tom Verso

Of the many ideas explored in John Domini’s absolutely brilliant novel “A Tomb on the Periphery”, one of the lesser, albeit not insignificant, has to do with the Naples...

January 5, 2012

Before Fresco...Mosaic ("True Painting for Eternity") – Sicilian Majesty: Cefalu, Cappella Palatina, Monreale

Tom Verso
Monreale Cathedral

The Italian American literati love to play the southern-Italian ‘Organized Crime’ version of Hesse’s “Glass Bead Game”(constructing eloquent albeit reality-empty...

December 26, 2011

Saviano & Roubini – Do New York ... Literati love the ‘Shtick’

Tom Verso

In U.S. House of Representatives – “Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Committee” – hearings on December 15, 2011, very authoritative expert witnesses in...

December 20, 2011

Michael Parenti’s “The Assassination of Julius Caesar” – Review Part II: “...the good interred with their bones...”

Tom Verso
Vincenzo Camuccini, 1798

Southern-Italian Americans should know the history of Rome in far greater detail than is taught in schools and represented in mass media, both largely limited to mad emperors and...

December 3, 2011

Italy Bows to Northern Europeans – The Bourbons Avenged

Tom Verso
Berlusconi (Italy) bows to the northern dominated European Union

Now that the European Union has sent the Northern League’s favored Prime Minister Berlusconi pack’n, Northern Italians now know that Northern Europeans do not make a...

November 19, 2011

Michael Parenti’s “The Assassination of Julius Caesar” – A Review: Part I ‘Gentlemen’s History’ vs. ‘People’s History’

Tom Verso

Italian American scholars sitting in American university “Chairs of Wisdom” produce volumes of Chicago nostalgia histories and Florence art histories; yet hardly a whisper...

November 3, 2011

Pino Aprile’s “Terroni”: All That Has Been Done To Ensure That The Italians of The South Became "Southerners"– a review

Tom Verso
Il Blog di Beppe Grillo – Il Primo Magazine solo on Line

The simultaneous publication of the “Roots and Branches” Chicago Italian American history, and the English translation of “Terroni” is a delicious juxtaposition of the...

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