Journalism After Snowden The Future of Free Press in the Surveillance State edited by Emily Bell and Taylor Owen with Smitha Khorana and Jennifer R.Henrichsen Foreword by Lee C.Bollinger

We live in a technological, invisible cage where expressions like freedom of communication is just apparent and where our texts, messages, phone calls are, somewhere in the world, analyzed, read, archived, listened, by anonymous persons.

We are spied every second of our existence and every moment.
When we go somewhere it's possible to track our movements thanks to our smart phone or various devices like the ones installed in the most modern cars; what we think, how we feel, our thoughts, our friends, our connections, our daily life, our voice, out face is an open book.


Considering the revelations of Snowden, how much intrusive should be a government in the private life of its citizens?

It's not just a story of security, but also of ethicity.

Are we free in this techological world?

We can answer: no, we are not free; if, for a common person this "revelation" (considering also the latest scandal of Cambridge Analytica) can't alter the process of sending, receiving e-mails, living the digital life with relaxation, because, after all doesn't work for the FBI or the CIA and doesn't have big secrets, you can just imagine what happens differently when a reporter follows a difficult case where prudence, secrecy, privacy in a word, should be a priority. When in a few words, he is an investigative reporter.

It's this one, the sum of the splendid book, published by Columbia University Press Journalism After Snowden The Future of Free Press in the Surveillance State edited by Emily Bell and Taylor Owen with Smitha Khorana and Jennifer R.Henrichsen Foreword by Lee C.Bollinger.

The book divided in four sections: The story and the Source, Journalists and Sources, Governing Surveillance, Communications Networks and New Media analyzes the situation of reporters and free press.

At first there was Snowden with his revelations.
He tried to contact The Times but upset for not receiving a honest answer in brief times, Snowden decided to contact The Guardian and then the news appeared in the Washington Post as well.

Starting with and from the post-Snowden case this book analyzes the answers given by journalism after this storm.

Defining, classifying a reporter, a journalist, is difficult, because a reporter is not part of the system.
He is an independent man or woman who in a daily, weekly, monthly base reports facts. He is the anticipator of the historian, he tells the facts when they are in motion, when they happen.

There are not too many reporters who want to keep safe their digital devices from spywares, malwares, or newsroom  interested to invest money in security as remarked in various chapters of this book.

Accepting to use a PC, a smartphone for investigating, if the reporter is an investigative reporter means that it will be necessary to install wagons of softwares just for keeping safe all the informations sent and received, with the risk that, if someone sent via file etc a malware, and then the reporter decides of installing protections all the work for keeping safe the device is gone.
PCS and smart phones are nice but they can be a trap; and so?

Better the old notebook, a pen, a common camera, maybe letters sent without adding the reporter's name and last name so that no one can guess who sent it; better to use public phones, better to meet people in incognito using aliases. Better not bring with you any smart phone; better to set you free from this cage. Better to work...Freely.
Better everything than not technology.

If a reporter works for a big newsmagazine or magazine and follows a sensitive case, of course the procedure described before will be necessary and indispensable.
Not only: if the reporter decides of using devices necessary to keep "blind" also the various cameras and webcams, because yes, they can be spied as well. A pretty stressing life.

The book analyzes journalism and social medias but also scandals like the Pentagon Papers or the Boston Globe's publication of the sexual abuses in the Catholic Church started in 2002. The story in this second case had an international resonance with heavy repercussion for all the Catholicism thanks to the net.
It became a viral news and it meant the discovery of a lot of pedophile catholic priests in many countries in the world with great embarrassment for the catholic establishment.
All of it discovered thanks to the work of the team Spotlight of Boston.

You'll read an interview realized with Snowden, positive chapters about  this man described like a normal person who, for a story of justice, decided to do what he did.

Interesting, better than a spy-story, beautiful book for everyone, reporters if they want to discover the latest news about free press and common citizens.

Highly suggested.

I thank Columbia Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

The Passenger Islanda

The Passenger Islanda, Iceland a new editorial initiative by Iperborea is a book-magazine dedicated to all explorers of the world and it starts its first literary touristic-trip-guide with the most ancestral place of this world: Iceland.
Isolated by the rest of the world, Iceland is known for its great culture, affectionate language, because it is possible to admire a primordial nature, where, who visited Iceland can tell you everyone are relaxed, animals included! and where a landscape can changes abruptly because this one is a young country populated by many volcanoes.

With a lot of irony, and fun, we will discover thanks to various and diversified chapters of this book a land loved so badly. We will discover the respect of peasants for the duck somateria mollissima and the wonderful feathers that they love to remove (just at bit) at these ducks. These feathers are so warm and they will become expensive clothes and blankets for very rich people.

If they would be less expensive...

No sure if you knew that but time ago Gnarr a famous comedian, was also the mayor of the capital of Iceland, Reykjavik.
His party, The Best Party, wanted to be an answer at the establishment and common political parties, unable to bring answers.
Icelanders lived a terrible period of crisis, because of its banks and because of the eruption of the volcano, that brought us less smog in the air for some days and the old blue sky I knew when I was little ;-) with, of course enormous problems for business, planned trips.

They joked for all the electoral campaign and they won with great success.
Astonished and scared at first, these group of not-at-all-politicians were in grade to re-put things in order and also if Gnarr is not anymore in policy, (some of these so-called punk are still in policy) he remembers that years with joy and excitement.

We will discover that the language is sacred for this land, and Icelanders are trying the same experiment of France: to preserve their tongue like warriors although heavily and massively attached by a language, english, commonly used.

Tourism the first hilarious chapter, that will let you laugh a lot.

Icelanders for trying to resuscitate the country and their bad economy from the crisis of the past years tried with a card, tourism, with great success and hilarious conclusions!

Last, but not least did you know that Icelanders developed a special app for trying to discover if they go to bed sometimes with distant cousins or relatives? Most of Icelanders have the same blood in common.

Most of them have written a book; they're avid readers, in general they change work a lot of time in their life, let's add also that they're great creators of songs, musical bands, singers, and fishermen of course..

Interesting, funny, there is much more to discover, and I know that you will simply love to read this book!

Other editions of The Passenger, six every year will be released soon and they will involve at first Holland,  then Japan, Norway, Argentina and Portugal. Stay tuned!

Highly recommended.

I thank Iperborea for the physical copy of this book.


Anna Maria Polidori

Scents&Sensibility Perfume in Victorian Literary Culture by Catherine Maxwell

A book that will be treasured, this one, by all that people great estimators of Victorian literature, poetry, and...scents and perfumes.

Just some weeks ago Oxford University Press published Scents&Sensibility Perfume in Victorian Literary Culture by Catherine Maxwell.

Starting from the anecdote that scents became famous and preponderant during Victorian Age and that in particular middle and upper class enjoyed the most of scents at first, discovering personal hygiene and baths as well, this book will reveal the preponderant role invested by scents in Victorian Age "read" in literature, poems. Letters exchanged by various poets and writers with their dear ones embellished using scents's perceptions, sensations and metaphorical descriptions for presenting the intensity of a moment lived and experienced thanks to a peculiar perfume.

From the human smell, the first one, passing through the underwear of models donated and wanted  for trying to capture the young sexual smell for being reproduced later (I admit that this one was a genial idea for collecting other people's used underwear, tastes are tastes...), we will understand the delicate touch and fragrances that at first conquered most poets and writers.

Violet was the most appreciated scent by women.
Men, there will be a radical change with dandies, didn't love to add perfume, but they didn't disdeign to bring sometimes a handkerchief with some drops of scent with them. What they loved the most, like Swinburne did, was the scent of nature, sea, flowers.

Browning compares in a poem friends to smell, scents, perfumes. Who knows what scent we will leave behind us? It is a vibrant part this final part of Sordello.

I found very interesting the story of the eau de cologne. The creator an italian one, but also the evolution of scents with the decades and the entrance in scene of dandies and my beloved Oscar Wilde.
Perfume with and for Dorian Gray meant a change: it was a signal of  strength, sensuality and sexuality. A game of senses, luxury, importance, richness, excess.
Scented bath soap started to become the normality at the end of 1800.

Highly suggested to all perfumes, eau de cologne, scents addicted and to all that gentle souls in love for delicacy and for the most beautiful part of the world; the one of scents and...sensibility, of course.

Wonderful gift!


I thank Oxford University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Women Artists in Paris 1850-1900 by Lauren Madeline

Women Artists in Paris 1850-1900 is a catalogue by Lauren Madeline with Bridget Alsdorf, Richard Kendall, Jane R.Becker, Vibeke Waallan Hansen, Joelle Bollock.

This important book is published in collaboration with Yale University Press on the traveling art exhibit Women Artists.

More or less 90 painting by 37 artists.

The peculiarity? These artists were women from different part of the world and Europe but all in love for painting.

When we studied history of art, I don't think I remember any name close to Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Van Gogh of the opposite genre. They were all men.

Was there a reason?

Of course. Discrimination. Can you believe it?

Women were seen as people without any kind of right of expressing  themselves in particular in the so-called "Fine Arts" sector.
Not only: they had the right to procreate, to serve their spouses, but their role was defined as housewives. All the rest, a predominant social role, of real thinkers and creatives unacceptable.

Impressionism was impressive because it broke a lot of old conventions and rules although it meant a lot of sacrifices, and when you'll read the biographies of these artists, you will discover that their biographies are pretty similar.

Not accepted as artists, seen as inferiors if compared to men, it was, this one, a long fight.

Schools like the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (Fine Arts) didn't take in consideration at all the admission of girls in their institute, 'till at the end of 1800.

A section of the book is dedicated to the women painters of North European Countries, where we suppose that there was a biggest freedom but where we will see that ladies fought a lot for seeing recognized their role in the society, as thinkers, creative ladies.

But all of them, wherever they lived had a dream: Paris. At that time Paris was lived like a dream, like the place where every dream could become true, where the Impressioniss was born and creativity couòd bloom. Everyone wanted to afford to Paris for studying art and painting. 

I was impressed by the stunning paintings of these artists.

It's possible to see  in these canvas women in their daily-life, while they are eating, while they are drinking tea with some friends, while they put some flowers in a vase, or while they are reading a letter or a book.
Not forgotten the dimension of being mothers with impressive painters but also the work in the fields, with elaborated paintings in grade to capture not just the moment but the light and sincerity of that lives, faces and hard work. These artists with courage covered the sufferance not painted by their colleagues of opposite sex, giving to the reality a strongest representation and leaving a manifesto and a mark made by sensibility, harmony, but also desperation, (a treat like also the melancholic one not so known in male artists of the Impressionism) reality, daily-life, social life, poverty, richness, asperity.

Some artists: Mina Carlson-Bredberg, Edma Pontillon, Anna Ancher, Mary Cassatt, Marie Bracquemond.

Highly recommended.

I thank Yale University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna MariaPolidori

On Color by David Scott Kastan with Stephen Farthing

Beautiful, sunny book this one, On Color by David Scott Kastan with Stephen Farthing published by Yale University Press.
It's a quick, funny, interesting reading, plenty of curiosities and in grade to space in various disciplines for describing colors, and their meaning in our society and at first for also define color and the meaning of it.
We will discover that sometimes colors are just human perceptions, and that orange became orange just when oranges, yes the fruits started to be imported in Europe. In the past it didn't have a proper name the so-called yellow-red.

Green is the color of environmentalists, green parties and movements all devoted to the protection of nature, environment, animals, but we will also understand that maybe old Greek people couldn't see like us some colors and that is why Homer when described certain scenes in his epic works wasn't in grade to give a realistic portrait of them.

Not only: if we can distinguish just few colors, did you know that pigeons' vision is much better than our ones and that Indigo, as a color became the one we know thanks to Newton? In the past indigo was used for the blue, but then it became at all effects an independent color with its own dignity.

Blue is considered the spiritual color for excellence, but there are other surprises...It can be the color of depressed people.

The example the one of Picasso who painted The Tragedy, where an entire family, maybe after a disgrace, is desolated, alone, surrounded by solitude and discomfort. All the painting in frustrating tonalities of blues.

The solitude, terror, and inability of reaction of the adults is broken only by the hand of the son of this couple, who touching the leg of his dad in search of comfort, of a human comfort, opening his other arm, seems to ask him an explanation for this interior devastating hole.

"What happened?" It seems to ask him.

But, no one of the adults, closed in their crossed hands, thoughts, and shock, gives him any explanation because the sufferance is too much and can't be described. The calm sea and the sky are like a final sad hug, a melancholic homogeneous  blanket created by nature for this little family.

With color yellow the authors will start a digression about the so-called  "yellow people" baptized in this way by Europeans travelers: Chinese, Japanese ones. The digressioncontinues with an interesting and important topic about races, what it means color, and why when we speak of colored" people" in general these words are read under a negative aspect, and how to act against these prejudices.

Violet is the color of Impressionism, of Monet and Manet. Manet wrote once that everyone would have painted in violet in the future. Less strong than purple, pretty, delicate, relaxing this one was "the shock of the new," apported by the Impressionists: the massively introduction  of a color that in the past was not taken at all in great consideration; but after all, what Impressionists did was to paint outdoor, so to try to capture the magic of a minute or two, when the light was perfect as also the color that they wanted to impress in their canvas.  A story of few minutes and the scenario would have been gone forever.

Interesting also black, white and gray.
Gray...Enjoy a chapter in...pictures, the color of pictures, the color of past.

White captured the attention of the writers with a literary classics like Moby Dick by Melville is. Ahab, the white whale and their strenuous fight for winning.
Who knows? Maybe it was because of this peculiarity, the white color the main reason why Ahab insisted at long for capture this whale. Maybe if this whale was common he wouldn't never have sacrificed time and life for searching for her. The While Whale.
But white is also the purity of a poor lamb captured and killed at Easter's time and a lot more.

Black is adorably represented by an elegant Audrey Hepburn wearing her little black dress, launched, thanks to the movie: Breakfast at Tiffany's. Black became a symbol of fashion starting from the beginning of 1900s and not seen anymore just as the color of funerals or the color of a period of mourning or, again, the color preferred by melancholic people.
Elegant, if you wear a little black dress you don't need anything else.


We will also understand that we see colors also when we close our eyes, or that our perception of them can changes with the time or that maybe we are born without the proper vision of all the spectrum of colors that commonly we should see and that anyway seeing a color is mainly a perception.

Enjoy this colored, beautiful, sunny book. Once you will have read it, you'll see colors around you under a different... perspective.

Highly recommended.

I thank Yale University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Il Quaderno dei Nomi Perduti by Sofia Lundberg translated by Licia Vighi

Il Quaderno dei Nomi Perduti, The Address Book of Lost Names by Sofia Lundberg first book of this author translated by Licia Vighi is an enchanting novel and I am sure you will love it, if for you, memories, objects, life, past, are important. Published by Dea Planeta an italian publishing house, the book is so moving that I suggest you of keeping close to you a box of Kleenex when you'll read it.

The story the one of Doris, an elderly lady of 96 years living in Stockholm. Doris's flashbacks are the base of this book. Doris old and "trapped"  in the body of the elderly woman she became, close to the end of her human existence.

Her present is made by sufferance, a lot of pains because her bones are becoming everyday more weak. The lady doesn't neglect the use of the net and everyday she talks via Skype with Jenny the daughter of her sister, treated and followed as if she would have been her daughter.

Not only: Doris doesn't want to bring in her grave any secrets and so she writes some memories for Jenny for being read when she is dead. These memories explains her past life, her errors, restoring all her past and important people and facts in her life.

Doris was born in a common family. Once, her dad presented her a red address book.
"It will be important. You can keep here the most important people of your life."
The people of her existence, with their addresses, phone numbers, memories and their importance in her life.
Doris did it, marking, each time a person in her life passed away, the name with a line and the word: dead.

Looking at that red address book, what a desolation, thought Doris.
All her friends, relatives are dead. She is alone in the world, and just with a person still interested to her: Jenny in San Francisco, with a husband, three children and a busy life.

One day Doris falls and ends up to the hospital.

But who was Doris?

When her dad died, she remained with her mother but not at long. Being the oldest one, her mother found for her a place as waitress at the house of a certain Madame, a lady of great class. There, Doris will meet some of her best life's friends: Gosta, a painter and creative so different from the rest of Madame's friends, just interested to assault her. Doris established a great friendship with this man interested to conquer men.

Madame decided to change location and the two left for Paris. The chaotic life spent by Madame brought at the end at the "cession" of Doris at someone involved in the world of fashion. It was the beginning of her modelling for the best brands of Paris. The years spent with Nora.

The sad departure of her mother meant to Doris growing up her sister Agnes. At first Doris would have wanted to give her all the best, what she hadn't had. A proper education, good schools, wagons of books, after all her world was frivolous enough, but the arrival of the latest world war conflict constricted the two women with a financial income less happy than the one of the past at another change.

Doris in the past fell in love for a young man and in the while received a letter from him with some money for starting a life with her in the USA. Thrilled, she went to the USA with the sister. Great expectations, she will find a completely different reality...

Avoiding to tell you all, let's say that at some point Doris will return to Europe in a painful, disgusting way, and later she will rediscover again her painter friend with which she would have lived at long in Stockholm.

It's a novel of a terminal life, of dreams to realize, of life mixed with death, of memories, life that perpetuates itself, of an important love never forgotten, of children, mainly unwanted ones, addiction, love, friendship, help, with new stories to tell, new pages still white to be written. The ones of Jenny&Family.

If you have close to you old parents the phrase they will tell you often is: "I will die soon. I don't have a lot of time anymore." And in this book you will find this phrase pronounced a lot by Doris discovering also all the powerful meaning of life.

Doris with her irony thinks that dying after all will be a great adventure.

What can Doris would wish for your life?

"Enough sun for brightening your days, enough rain for appreciating the sun, enough joy for fortifying your soul, enough pain for appreciating the small moments of happiness in life. Enough friends for being in grade to say good-bye."

This book remarks the power of love, of that love in grade to resist at the time, decades, and life itself. That love that let say: "You are beautiful" also when you know that you are dying but the eyes of your old partner can still look at you with the old, tender love experienced when you were a teen-ager, at that love that will let you think: "If..." because you know that the other one was the person with which you would have wanted to spend your life and you have not because of destiny.

Highly recommended.

I thank so much Dea Planeta for this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Who's Who When Every One is Someone Else by C.D. Rose

If you love books, world of books, if every book is important for you, if you are a desperate books addicted, if you fight everyday with yourselves against the terrible temptation and compulsion of buying new or used books, this book, Who's Who When Every One is Someone Else by C.D. Rose will be a wonderful, fantastic reading.
Why?
It tells everything you want to know about the world of books seeing  as spiritual and material guide, as a way of life, and seen as best companions that, once entered in our life will always be in grade to capture and rapture our attention.
I was impressed by the beautiful, researched writing-style of Rose, in grade to enchant the reader with a stunning prose, in an elaborated succulent novel where digressions, mysteries, passions, stunning lectures, researched descriptions, weird characters, re-discovery of old books covered by the heavy mantel of dust of time and forgetfulness will play the most important part.

The story starts when a teacher is invited to a certain university in a certain undefined European city for ten lectures regarding forgetting books or "Great Lost Books."

A book, for a reason or another, loses its appeal without becoming at all a best-seller sometimes.

Why a book is forgotten, lost?

Maybe it was born with an originality still not understood; maybe it wasn't the best moment for emerging because the thematic surpassed or too modern, maybe the story too complicated and the reader couldn't follow it clearly; in a case an author described a kiss using fifteen pages. A real intellectual virtuosity and tour de force.

The teacher accepts enthusiastically. They pay great money, he will discover a new city: why not?

The arrival sounds weird, because the teacher was waiting for the Professor, the man who invited him, but this man didn't appear replaced by a taxi driver not too calm while he drives along the city. There will be other surprises along the way as well.
While the Professor remains a mystery, the Profesora and other weird characters, will surround during the weeks in the city this teacher.

This story is about reality, appearance, perceptions, surreality, research of graves of maybe never born intellectuals, interior dialogues, marvelous explanations of lost books that at the end will result very alive in a trip, lived intensely, intellectually and physically.

I can tell you this: you'll love this book and you will become an addicted of C.D.Rose's books.

Highly recommended.

I thank Melville for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori