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      • Food & Drink
        March 2021

        A Brief History of Pasta

        In Ten Traditional Dishes

        by Luca Cesari

        Pasta is Italy’s national dish and if there is one thing that every Italian menu around the world cannot lack – be it in Italy or in the United States, in France or in Hong Kong – is pasta al pomodoro. But what’s the story behind this dish everyone thinks they know so well? And what about pasta alla carbonara or amatriciana, or ragù alla bolognese?  A Brief History of Pasta will answer every burning question you may have on the history of your favorite dishes, complete with different recipes (the oldest, the most common, the most intriguing variations...) and a treasure-trove of anecdotes about how these dishes evolved, in Italy and in the rest of the world. Because there is only one thing that could not be left home, when an Italian decided to embark on an adventure abroad: a notebook full of pasta recipes.

      • Technology, Engineering & Agriculture

        The Immortals

        Stories from Our Future

        by Alberto Giuliani

        One day, a soothsayer on the shore of Lake Baikal, Siberia, told Alberto Giuliani that he would die a violent death sometime between 2020 and 2021. He never fully believed the prophecy, until it was confirmed by a shaman in Vrindavan, India. The shaman told him to always wear a yellow sapphire on his right index finger. The stone would help him choose between life and death, when the fateful day would come. The two prophecies have left Alberto with a hunger to know what the future of humanity will look like – because he may not be here to witness it firsthand. And so, he started travelling, in search for an answer.

      • Geography & the Environment

        Ice

        Tales from a Disappearing Continent

        by Marco Tedesco, Alberto Flores D’Arcais

        When people think about the Arctic, they think about a monotone expanse of white snow, devoid of distinguishing figures. They could not be more wrong. Snow can be blue, or purple, or even green under the right light, and in tiny holes under the surface of the ice a strange kind of biome flourishes, which may hold the solution to the mystery of life. Marco Tedesco is one of the scientists living among the fast-disappearing ice. Every facet of his life revolves around it, whether mapping the geography of rivers or studying the bacteria inside the cryoconite holes or the remains of the High Arctic camel. Ice. Tales from a Disappearing Continent is an exciting scientific adventure much like Charles Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle, but, at the same time, it is a heartfelt plea to treasure ice, because without it we would lose not only the roots of our past, but also our future.

      • Literature & Literary Studies
        March 2021

        How to Think Like Ulysses

        What the Classics Can Teach Us about Life

        by Bianca Sorrentino

        What can the Trojan War tell us about women’s empowerment and immigration? What can the myth of Ulysses tell us about human agency when it is pitted against seemingly unsourmountable circumstances? And what about Orpheus? What can his figure teach us about humanity and its relationship with death? We tend to look at the Classics as dusty, as things from the past, something to study in a college course, but the truth is that they are far more modern than we think, and they can shed a marvellous light on what it means to be humans in the 21st century. Written with a charming levity that cleverly masks years of research, How to Think Like Ulysses is a heartfelt plea to rediscovers the literary wonders of the ancient world and to heed their lesson: life in our contemporary world may be very much different from Athens in the 5th century B.C., but perhaps we didn’t change as much.

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