Reviews & Essays

“Four Books Every Leader Should Read”
Thrive Global (May 10, 2019).
“From Great Reader to Great Leader”
Thrive Global (May 3, 2019).
“There’s More to Italian Fiction Than Elena Ferrante”
New York Times (May 18, 2018): R34.
“Voltaire’s Folly: Why Great Critics Make Disastrous Judgments”
Chronicle of Higher Education 63.24 (February 12, 2017).
“Shipwrecked in a Sweet Sea”
Review of Tim Parks, trans., Leopardi, Passions Times Literary Supplement (July 6, 2016).
“The Critic’s Soul”
Chronicle of Higher Education 62.69 (March 27, 2016).
“I Became a Father in an Instant—Becoming a Dad Would Take Years”
Time (June 17, 2015).
“Summer Syllabus”
Huffington Post (June 17, 2015) .
“Speaking to My Father in a Dead Dialect”
New York Times Opinion Pages (June 25, 2014): SR9.
“In Scented Boudoirs”
Review of Gabriele D'Annunzio, Pleasure, trans. Lara Gochin Raffaelli. Times Literary Supplement (January 3, 2014): 19.
“I Found Myself in a Dark Wood”
New York Times Opinion Pages (December 18, 2013): SR9.
“It Started in Naples”
Review of Elena Ferrante, The Story of a New Name, trans. Ann Goldstein. New York Times (September 27, 2013): R19.
“Disjointed Lists”
Review of Umberto Eco, Inventing the Enemy and Other Occasional Writings. Times Literary Supplement (August 9, 2013): 29.
“End of the Affair: Rossellini and Antonioni after Neorealism”
Raritan 32.4 (June 1, 2013): 105-19.
“This Could Be ‘Heaven,’ or This Could Be ‘Hell.’”
Review of Dante, The Divine Comedy, trans. Clive James. New York Times (April 21, 2013): R13.
A World of Color
Review of Sheila Hales, Titian: His Life. New York Times (December 30, 2012): R23.
“Italo Calvino’s Adolescence—That In-Between Time”
Review of Italo Calvino, Intro the War, trans. Martin McLaughlin. Times Literary Supplement (June 27, 2012): 4.
“Faces of Florence”
Los Angeles Review of Books (June 26, 2012).
“Silvio and Signoria”
Review of Maurizio Viroli, Servants of Liberty: Berlusconi’s Italy. Beppe Severgnini, Mamma Mia! Berlusconi’s Italy Explained to Posterity and Friends Abroad. Times Literary Supplement (February 18, 2012): 13.
Review of Michelangelo Antonioni, Red Desert. DVD.
Modernism/Modernity 18.1 (January 1, 2011): 205-209.
“Reassessing Rossellini”
Review of Roberto Rossellini, Rome Open City. DVD. Criterion Collection, 2010. American Scholar (December 1, 2010): 102-106.
Review of John Rhodes, Stupendous, Miserable City: Pasolini’s Rome.
Modernism/Modernity 15.2 (April 1, 2008): 414-15.
“Spending the Afterlife at Harvard”
Review of Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club. Los Angeles Times (March 23, 2003): R4.
“Pietro Di Donato’s Christ in Concrete“
Ambassador 23.2 (2011): 53-54.
“The Runaway Melodrama of Raffaello Matarazzo”
Review of Criterion DVD (Eclipse Series 27): Raffaello Matarazzo’s Chains (1949), Tormento (1950), Nobody's Children (1952), and The White Angel (1955). Cineaste (Winter, 2012).
“Dark Knight of the Soul”
Review of Andrew Graham-Dixon, Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane. Bookforum 18.3 (2011): 46-47. Portuguese translation, “Pintor da luz e das trevas da alma,” trans. Terezinha Martino. Estadão de Sao Paolo. November 5, 2011.
“Coin of the Realm [the Italian Lira]”
Ambassador 22.3 (2011): 43-45.
“Unblurred Melody”
Review of Giacomo Leopardi, Canti, trans. Jonathan Galassi. Bookforum 17.4 (2010): 17-18.
“A Misspent Youth”
Review of J. M. Coetzee, Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II. Salmagundi 144-45 (2004-05): 299-305.
“Who Needs Poetry?”
Review of Geoffrey Hartman, Scars of the Spirit: The Struggle Against Inauthenticity. Salmagundi 143 (2004): 246-50.
Review of Robert Pinsky, Inferno: A New Verse Translation and Daniel Halperin, ed., Dante’s “Inferno”: Translations by Twenty Contemporary Poets.
Yale Italian Poetry 1.2 (1997): 102-109.
Review of William Franke, Dante’s Interpretive Journey.
Italica 74.3 (1997): 412-13.