The triumph of the Annales school is not in its long-running journal (which is likely ignored by most of Europe’s population), but rather in the acceptance of the “structures of everyday life” (to use a phrase from Fernand Braudel) as [Read full article...]

The stereotype of the Neapolitan and papal economies as stagnant under alternating policies at once too laissez faire and then too controlled is one widely disseminated in the years following Italy’s unification in 1860. In a recent article, Manuel Vaquero [Read full article...]

I believe I am not alone in being surprised with the speed with which “gluten-free” and Celiac’s disease have become common terms. I’m not sure, despite being interested in food, that I would have been able to define the latter [Read full article...]

A recent press release from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the ministry, as part of an effort by the Italian government to reduce the severity of global climate change, was working to be more green. Two of [Read full article...]

This fascinating video shows the making of the traditional Sardinian bread, pane carasau, also called “carta musica” in Italian. The bread is extremely dry and likely originated where there was little opportunity to bake and bread had to keep for [Read full article...]

Slow Foodists are unlikely to take kindly to this cogent and blistering criticism of the Slow Food movement and its gourmand-chief, Carlo Petrini. Rachel Laudan’s piece on Slow Food is ostensibly a review of Petrini’s 2004 book Slow Food: The [Read full article...]