Luigi Barzini Jr. (21 December 1908 – 30 March 1984) was an Italian journalist, writer and politician most famous for his 1964 book The Italians, delving deeply into the Italian national character and introducing many English and German speaking readers to Italian life and culture.

thumb|Inscription in the German edition of: "The Italiens", 1965 (Riemann Archives)

Early life

Barzini junior was born in Milan, Lombardy, the son of Luigi Barzini Sr., a famous journalist. In the 1920s, his father left the Corriere della Sera and moved to the United States, where he directed the Italian-American newspaper Corriere d'America from 1923 to 1931. He returned to Italy in 1930 to become a correspondent for Corriere della Sera.

According to Alley, writing in his memoir I Witness, Atcheson proclaimed that aboard the gunboat the group would be "as safe as you would be on good old American soil." Little did any of them know that in just a week's time, the Panay would be attacked and sunk, Sandri killed, and that they would witness the Rape of Nanking.

During the attack Barzini, although wounded, performed heroically helping to bring the wounded ashore and providing first aid to the best of his ability. As Sandri, known as "the Floyd Gibbons of Italy," His son is the filmmaker Andrea Barzini and his granddaughter is the writer Chiara Barzini. His daughter Benedetta, by his first wife Giannalisa Feltrinelli, was a successful fashion model during the 1960s. His marriage to Feltrinelli also made him the stepfather of Italian publisher and left-wing political activist Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Barzini also rejected as implausible conspiracy theories concerning Giangiacomo's death.

Works

  • Americans are Alone in the World (1953)
  • The Italians (1964)
  • Die Italiener, German Edition, Publisher: Heinrich Scheffler GmbH & Co., Frankfurt a. M. (1965)
  • From Caesar to the Mafia: Sketches of Italian Life (1971)
  • O, America! (1977); US title: O America: When You and I Were Young
  • The Impossible Europeans (1983); US title: The Europeans

References

Bibliography

  • D'Agostino, Peter R. (2004). Rome in America. Transnational Catholic Ideology from the Risorgimento to Fascism, Chapell Hill (NC): University of North Carolina Press,
  • Sarti, Roland (ed.) (2004). Italy: a reference guide from the Renaissance to the present, Infobase Publishing,