Alexander Stille

Free Love, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of America's Largest Urban Commune

Sullivanians

The devolution of the Sullivan Institute, from psychoanalytic organization to insular, radical cult. In the middle of the Ozzie and Harriet 1950s, the birth control pill was introduced and a maverick psychoanalytic institute, the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis, opened its doors in New York City. Its founders, Saul Newton and Jane Pearce, wanted to start a revolution, one grounded in ideals of creative expression, sexual liberation, and freedom from the expectations of society, and the revolution, they felt, needed to begin at home. Dismantling the nuclear family—and monogamous marriage—would free people from the repressive forces of their parents. In its first two decades, the movement attracted many brilliant, creative people as patients: the painter Jackson Pollock and a swarm of other abstract expressionist artists, the famed art critic Clement Greenberg, the singer Judy Collins, and the dancer Lucinda Childs. In the 1960s, the group evolved into an urban commune of three or four hundred people, with patients living with other patients, leading creative, polyamorous lives. But by the mid-1970s, under the leadership of Saul Newton, the Institute had devolved from a radical communal experiment into an insular cult, with therapists controlling virtually every aspect of their patients’ lives, from where they lived and the work they did to how often they saw their sexual partners and their children. Although the group was highly secretive during its lifetime and even after its dissolution in 1991, the noted journalist Alexander Stille has succeeded in reconstructing the inner life of a parallel world hidden in plain sight in the middle of Manhattan. Through countless interviews and personal papers, The Sullivanians reveals the nearly unbelievable story of a fallen utopia.

Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune

The Sullivanians

A study of the relationship between the mafia and the Italian government exposes the hidden alliances that have shaped Italian politics since the end of World War II and details the investigations that revealed them. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic

Excellent Cadavers

Chronicles how religious differences strengthened and weakened the relationship of the author's parents, set against the tumult and strife of the 1930s and 1940s.

A Marriage in War and Peace

The Force of Things

A profile of modern Italy as reflected by the leadership decisions of Silvio Berlusconi traces the president's career and influence, contending that his wealth, power, and ties to corruption have resulted in a dangerous new form of political populism and victimized everyday citizens. Reprint.

Media + Money + Celebrity = Power = Silvio Berlusconi

The Sack of Rome

Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism

Benevolence and Betrayal

Eric Mosbacher

Pitigrilli

Cocaine

Award-winning author Alexander Stille has been called "one of the best English-language writers on Italy" by the New York Times Book Review, and in The Sack of Rome he sets out to answer the question: What happens when vast wealth, a virtual media monopoly, and acute shamelessness combine in one man? Many are the crimes of Silvio Berlusconi, Stille argues, and, with deft analysis, he weaves them into a single mesmerizing chronicle—an epic saga of rank criminality, cronyism, and self-dealing at the highest levels of power.

Exploring the experiences of Italian Jews under fascism, five factual narratives and extensive interviews reconstruct Mussolini's Italy for Italian Jews from the perspectives and fates of five different Italian-Jewish families. Reprint.

Melissa Harris

Roberto Scarpinato

Renate Siebert

Letizia Battaglia

Simona Mafai

Leoluca Orlando

Letizia Battaglia s story, her unique vision of Sicily, and her fight for justice against the Mafia as revealed in this biographical monograph are as stunning as they are heroic."

Passion, Justice, Freedom--Photographs of Sicily

"Conheça a história real de Giovanni Falcone, o juiz italiano que desmontou a maior máfia Italiana da história, combateu o crime organizado e inspirou Sérgio Moro a implementar a Operação Lava Jato no Brasil Em 1992, a Itália foi convulsionada por dois assassinatos descarados de autoria da Cosa Nostra. Giovanni Falcone e Paolo Borsellino, os magistrados sicilianos que haviam sido os inimigos mais implacáveis da máfia, responsáveis por colocar atrás das grades mais de 400 mafiosos, políticos e empresários foram mortos a sangue frio e sem nenhum disfarce. No entanto, depois dos assassinatos, centenas de "homens de honra" foram presos e o governo que os protegeu por quase meio século foi finalmente afastado do cargo. Esta é a história que Morte a vossa excelência conta com tanta perspicácia e imediatismo. Com prefácio de Sergio Moro, podemos entender porque esta história inspirou a Operação Lava Jato no Brasil e como foi possível aplicar o conceito da Delação Premiada usado por Falcone em terras brasileiras, além de técnicas jurídicas para acelerar processos burocráticos defasados que só beneficiavam criminosos em processo de condenação. Combinando uma profunda compreensão de seus heróis condenados e uma análise sem precedentes dos códigos estritos da Máfia e das rivalidades assassinas, o autor nos dá um livro que tem o poder de uma grande obra da história e o suspense de um verdadeiro thriller."

Morte à Vossa excelência

One woman's passionate battle for justice. Letizia Battaglia's story, her vision of Sicily, and her fight for justice against the Mafia as revealed in this biographical monograph is as stunning as it is heroic. This W. Eugene Smith Award-winning photographer demonstrates photography's power to serve as both a weapon and a voice for the silent majority. After years of fighting for the life of her troubled city of Palermo-as a photographer, deputy councilwoman, ecological activist, defender of women's rights, and defender of human rights-Battaglia continues the battle with the fierce passion, intelligence, and vision for which she is known. Letizia Battaglia: Passion, Justice, Freedom juxtaposes iconic pictures of the everyday joy, suffering, and vitality of the Palermitani with images showing the effects of the Mafia predators who have controlled much of the city for so long. Along with an intimate profile of the photographer by Melissa Harris, Alexander Stille chronicles Battaglia's fight against the Mafia, putting her photographs in the context of Palermo in the 1980s and '90s. Renate Siebert addresses the heretofore unexplored role of women and the Mafia in her essay. Magazine editor Simona Mafei contributes an essay about her work with Battaglia.

Photographs of Sicily

Passion, Justice, Freedom

A masterpiece of literary memory—a powerful exploration of the intersections of family, history, and memory "One evening in May 1948, my mother went to a party in New York with her first husband and left it with her second, my father." So begins the passionate and stormy union of Mikhail Kamenetzki, aka Ugo Stille, one of Italy's most celebrated journalists, and Elizabeth Bogert, a beautiful and charming young woman from the Midwest. The Force of Things follows two families across the twentieth century—one starting in czarist Russia, the other starting in the American Midwest—and takes them across revolution, war, fascism, and racial persecution, until they collide at mid-century. Their immediate attraction and tumultuous marriage is part of a much larger story: the mass migration of Jews from fascist-dominated Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. It is a micro-story of that moment of cross-pollination that reshaped much of American culture and society. Theirs was an uneasy marriage between Europe and America, between Jew and WASP; their differences were a key to their bond yet a source of constant strife. Alexander Stille's The Force of Things is a powerful, beautifully written work with the intimacy of a memoir, the pace and readability of a novel, and the historical sweep and documentary precision of nonfiction writing at its best. It is a portrait of people who are buffeted about by large historical events, who try to escape their origins but find themselves in the grip of the force of things.

LA REVOLUCIÓN TECNOLÓGICA Y LOS GRANDES MONUMENTOS DE LA HUMANIDAD, DESDE LAS PIRÁMIDES DE EGIPTO HASTA LA BIBLIOTECA DEL VATICANO. Vivimos inmersos en lo que es uno de los periodos de desarrollo más emocionantes de la historia de la humanidad. Desde la Antigüedad hasta el siglo XIX, la vida, en muchos sentidos, cambió relativamente poco. En los últimos cien años, sin embargo, la velocidad a la que se suceden los cambios ha incrementado exponencialmente. Una serie de inventos (desde el telégrafo, la radio y la televisión hasta la telefonía móvil e Internet) han revolucionado nuestro acceso a la información y nuestra forma de entender el mundo.Alexander Stille cuenta lo que significa para nuestra historia precipitarse hacia la era de la información. Los beneficios son evidentes: la datación por radiocarbono, los análisis de ADN y las bases de datos digitales ponen a nuestra disposición datos que nos permiten, mejor que nunca, velar por la preservación de nuestro pasado. Pero al mismo tiempo, nuestro patrimonio está amenazado. La globalización, la polución y la explosión demográfica amenazan con destruir nuestros monumentos y obras de arte más emblemáticos. El latín, antaño nuestra lingua franca, se halla al borde de la extinción; antiguas esculturas egipcias, como la Gran Esfinge de Gizeh, se están desmoronando; y ahora hasta hay una cafetería Starbucks en la Ciudad Prohibida de China.En una serie de fascinantes retratos, Stille nos desvela el lado más oscuro del cambio tecnológico. En sus viajes por el mundo entero, sopesa cuáles son las perspectivas de futuro de nuestro legado patrimonial, que ha sobrevivido a miles de años de guerras, pestes y hambrunas. Sus insólitas conclusiones son de lectura obligada para cualquier persona preocupada por el devenir de la humanidad en la actual era de la globalización.

la revolución tecnológica y los grandes monumentos de la humanidad, desde las pirámides de Egipto hasta la Biblioteca del Vaticano

El Futuro del pasado

An engrossing look at the cultural consequences of technological change and globalization Space radar, infrared photography, carbon dating, DNA analysis, microfilm, digital data bases-we have better technology than ever for studying and preserving the past. And yet the by-products of technology threaten to destroy--in one or two generations--monuments, works of art, and ways of life that have survived thousands of years of hardship and war. This paradox is central to our age. We use the Internet to access and assess infinite amounts of information--but understand less and less of its historical context. Globalization may eventually benefit countries around the world; it will also, almost certainly, lead to the disappearance of hundreds of regional dialects, languages, and whole societies. In The Future of the Past, Alexander Stille takes us on a tour of the past as it exists today and weighs its prospects for tomorrow, from China to Somalia to Washington, D.C. Through incisive portraits of their protagonists, he describes high-tech struggles to save the Great Sphinx and the Ganges; efforts to preserve Latin within the Vatican; the digital glut inside the National Archives, which may have lost more information in the information age than ever before; an oral culture threatened by a "new" technology: writing itself. Wherever it takes him, Stille explores not just the past, but our ideas about the past, how they are changing--and how they will have to change if our past is to have a future.

The Future of the Past

EXCELLENT CADAVERS (a term used in Sicily to distinguish the assassination of prominent government officials from the hundreds of common criminals killed in the course of routine mafia business) tells of the remarkable investigation spearheaded by Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the two Sicilian prosecutors who in the 1980s took the war against the Mafia further than anyone had ever dared. In 1992, aware that the two magistrates were without the complete support of the Italian government, the Mafia assassinated them. In death they were hailed as national heroes; the massive public outcry demanded their investigations to be completed. The outcome- the topping of crucial alliances that had forged political rule in Italy since WWII and the criminal indictment of Italy's most prominent leaders.

Excellent Cadavers (a term used in Sicily to distinguish the assassination of prominent government officials from the hundreds of common criminals killed in the course of routine mafia business) tells of the remarkable investigation spearheaded by Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the two Sicilian prosecutors who in the 1980s took the war against the Mafia further than anyone had ever dared. In 1992, aware that the two magistrates were without the complete support of the Italian government, the Mafia assassinated them. In death they were hailed as national heroes; the massive public outcry demanded their investigations be completed. The outcome: the toppling of crucial alliances that had forged political rule in Italy since WWII and the criminal indictment of Italy's most prominent leaders.

Alexander Stille

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