In December 2002, two burglars broke into the Vincent van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. They didn’t use helicopters or lasers or any of the stuff art thieves use in the movies; they climbed a fifteen-foot ladder to the roof and got into the second floor (European first floor), where the main display halls are. They…
Gomorrah (Picador Press) is Roberto Saviano’s bestselling account of the Camorra’s audacious corruption of Naples and beyond in the 1990s and 2000s. In December 1991, Giuseppe (Don Peppino) Diana, the doomed parish priest of the Neapolitan suburb of Casal di Principe, published an open letter to his parishioners called “For the Love of My People…
Naples is one of the oldest continuously-occupied cities in the world, but it’s mostly known for three things: pizza (most of the pizza we eat is Neapolitan-style), Mt. Vesuvius, and being perhaps the most spectacularly corrupt city in Italy. This last is quite an accomplishment, something like being the tallest man in the NBA. As…
