[PAST] Italy's American Baggage

Op-Ed by ANDREA CAMILLERI, Published by the New York Times, August 23, 2007.

THE century we left behind us just seven years ago was brilliantly described by the British historian Eric Hobsbawm as "the short century." But perhaps a more exact definition would be "the compressed century," for never has a period of 100 years seen so many world wars, so many scientific and technological advances, so many revolutions, so many epoch-making events piled almost one on top of the other. Indeed, the past century seems rather like a suitcase too small to hold everything that happened: it's too crammed with used clothing, some of which hinders us from closing it and putting it away in the attic once and for all.

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