Cuba sin Castro

 INSIDE CASTRO’S CUBA
VIDEO NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Shoah, Not Holocaust

On October 16, 1943 over a thousand Jews were sent from Rome to the German deathcamps. In 1985 Claude Lanzmann released a nine-hour documentary film called Shoah, which he prefers not to call a documentary. He spent eleven years interviewing witnesses, participants and survivors of the atrocities. The film is widely condsidered one of the best [...]

Music That Will Change Your Life

We interrupt the summer break to bring you the first installation of a new column of Martha’s Version called “Music That Will Change Your Life“. The idea is simple: music, like books and war, changes lives. So why not write about it? This, I admit, is an old aspiration. Back when I first read Lester Bangs I decided [...]

The Poetics of Independence

Last night Patti Smith rocked the Auditorium in Rome. Sitting next to me was an eight year-old boy with glasses watching who could be his grandma tear the strings off her feedback-droning Stratocaster, on her knees in a pool of sweat. On her chest an oversized white t-shirt with “LOVE” scribbled by hand beneath the [...]

The Temples on the Mount

On June 7, 1967 a troop of Israeli soldiers entered the Old City of Jerusalem. It was the third day of war. For the first time in nineteen years, Jews were standing before the Kotel, or Western Wall. Their victory was transmitted succinctly by radio: “Har ha-Bayt be-Yadenu”. “The Temple Mount is in our hands.”
This [...]

Rifondazione Umanista

E’ brutto cominciare un post con le virgolette. Per questo spreco due righe prima di scrivere questo: “A che serve essere vivi se non si ha il coraggio di lottare”. Lo ha detto Giuseppe Fava, giornalista italiano, ucciso dalla mafia il 5 Gennaio 1984 a Catania. E’ uno dei tanti giornalisti ammazzati dallo squadrismo fascista, [...]

Am-Bush a Roma

Non chiedetevi perchè le banane al supermercato vanno pesate sempre al tasto cinque della bilancia. E nemmeno perchè il senso unico di accesso a Piazza delle Cinque Scole a Roma sia continuamente violato. Ci sono cose che non possono essere spiegate. Se non con una frase fatta del tipo “così fan tutti”. Così tutti, o tanti, [...]

Happy Birthday, America

Every day for the past week the Richmond papers have been full stories on Jamestown. I admit that until now I had a very vague idea of the importance of Jamestown in American history. Every headline begins, “Celebrating America’s 400th!“
This weekend there is a huge festival at the Jamestown Settlement featuring Bruce Hornsby, Chaka Khan [...]

The audacity of Harold Bloom

What is it about Harold Bloom that gets people all worked up? Well, for one, there is almost no way to remain indifferent to a man who writes, “If Yahweh is a man of war, Allah is a suicide bomber.” One would like to think Bloom is being provocative with this phrase, despite his repeated [...]

Mourning Gotham Book Mart

Everyone’s mother has some tidbit of wisdom that stays with them throughout their adult life. Here’s mine: when a person dies, an entire library dies with them. Therefore, it stands to reason that when a bookstore dies, an entire fleet of readers dies with it.
The Gotham Book Mart was, by most accounts, an ordinary bookshop [...]