Kenneth Scambray

You’ve heard about those books that people call page turners or books that readers hoped would never end. This is one of those that you want to put down, that you want to end, but for the right reason. It …

John Keahey is a journalist turned travel writer who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. Some years ago on a visit to Italy he became enamored with Italian culture: its history and art. His falling for Italy in such a …

Danilo Dolci (1924-1997) was a social activist who dedicated his life to addressing the social injustice suffered by Sicilian peasants and workers after World War II.  He is sometimes called the Sicilian Gandhi. His pacifism was derived from his fundamentalist …

Many years ago the famous British writer Elizabeth Bowen announced to her friends that she intended to write a travel book on Rome. They warned her that better writers than she had tried to write about Italy and failed. To …

The role that immigrant and first generation Italian women played in the workforce before 1960 is not well-documented. Aside from such dramatic and tragic stories such as the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, immigrant women and their daughters have not been given …

  Since the advent of travel in the Medieval period, Italy has always been the focus of European voyagers. In the beginning, early travel books were written as guides for the Medieval religious pilgrim seeking Christian sites in Italy. With …

After eighteen books of poems, two national book awards, and an outstanding Community Service in Literature award, Maria Gillan has reinvented herself as a painter. The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets is a collection of her poems accompanied by her …

Monuments are problematic, especially official state or national monuments. They dictate to the viewer what to think.  How do we commemorate without dictating?  Mount Rushmore’s intended message does not stop Douglas Gladstone in Carving a Niche for Himself from problematizing …

In his self-effacing Forward to Of Jewish Race, Renzo Modiano asks why anyone would be interested in yet another book about the Holocaust in the context of the plethora of publications that have already been written, from the diaries of …

This is a novel that is laced with the bitterness and sweetness that characterizes Sicilian history. It’s an historical novel that finds a place between Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard and Dacia Maraini’s more recent The Silent Duchess. Anthony …