Blog

Lost in Translation
Lost in Translation
Why translated literature remains marginalized in America Walk into almost any American bookstore and you'll find shelves that seem to span the globe—covers evoking Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Warsaw, Lagos. Look... Read more...
The Constitution
America at 250: Tested, Not Trumped
America turns 250 today, but the mood is not very celebratory. The Trump administration has not honored the Constitution so much as pushed against it. That shows how fragile American... Read more...
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann and the Seductions of Decadence
He was the high priest of European culture who chronicled its decline with such elegance that the end often looked more beautiful than the beginning. In 1933, Thomas Mann was... Read more...
Gideon Levy
Gideon Levy: The Man Who Won’t Let the Occupation Be Occupied Territory
He was supposed to cover “the territories.” Somewhere along the way, the territories started covering him. Every week, while most Israelis encountered the West Bank through security briefings and blurred... Read more...
Penguin Books
The Sixpence That Changed Publishing Forever
In 1935, a man stood on an English railway platform with nothing to read. The newsstand offered the usual fare: newspapers, magazines, pulp. Good books existed, but they were expensive,... Read more...
James Joyce with his publisher Sylvia Beach in her bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, in Paris, 1922.
The Book That Had to Go on Trial
How Ulysses transformed censorship law and redefined what publishers could print In December 1933, a federal judge in New York was asked to rule on a question that courts had... Read more...
Fernando Pessoa and the Crowd in His Head
Fernando Pessoa and the Crowd in His Head
He made inner confusion sound orderly, and in doing so made ordinary life feel metaphysically unstable. In Lisbon in the early decades of the 20th century, a bespectacled office worker... Read more...
Israel Palestine
The Skeptic Who Stopped Asking: Sam Harris and the Seduction of Moral Certainty
In response to Sam Harris's recent Substack essay, "Why I Won't Debate Critics of Israel" On September 16, 1982, residents of the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila woke... Read more...
Why Bookstores Get to Send Books Back
Why Bookstores Get to Send Books Back
Picture a clothing shop sending unsold sweaters back to the manufacturer months later for a full refund. Or a supermarket returning stale cereal for cash. No retailer gets that deal,... Read more...
Saul Bellow
Bellow at Full Volume
He was the novelist who gave voice to the modern mind at full volume—neurotic, erudite, self-lacerating, and insistently alive. Saul Bellow carved a singular path through 20th-century American fiction. While... Read more...
Michael Parenti
Michael Parenti Understood What the Powerful Fear Most
In 1972, a thirty-eight-year-old political scientist named Michael Parenti stood before a congressional subcommittee and told its members, plainly and without diplomatic softening, that American democracy was functioning more or... Read more...
Gwendolyn Brooks and the Music of Ordinary Lives
Gwendolyn Brooks and the Music of Ordinary Lives
She made back porches sound like battlefields, and in doing so, turned the Black everyday into an American epic. Gwendolyn Brooks did not have to go far to find her... Read more...
Missing, but Not Forgotten: Charles Horman, Operation Condor, and America’s Hidden History
Missing, but Not Forgotten: Charles Horman, Operation Condor, and America’s Hidden History
On a warm September day in 1973, an American journalist named Charles Horman sat in a modest Santiago pension, taking notes on a country sliding into darkness. Within days, he... Read more...
Kindle
The Kindle's quiet revolution
When Amazon released its first e-reader in 2007, few mistook it for a cultural watershed. The device was ungainly, its screen gray and slow to refresh. It looked less like... Read more...
Marjane Satrapi, Whose Iran Defied American and Israeli Narratives, Dies at 56
Marjane Satrapi, Whose Iran Defied American and Israeli Narratives, Dies at 56
In one of the most indelible scenes from Persepolis, a young Marjane sits in her bedroom, convinced she will be the last prophet. She speaks to God with the seriousness of... Read more...
Marilyn Monroe
Keeping Marilyn in Mind: A Hundred Years of a Woman the World Can’t Forget
On a gray January afternoon in 1955, a secretary at the Actors Studio on West 44th Street in Manhattan looked up to see a familiar face—too familiar, in fact, for... Read more...
Why publishers keep chasing the “next Harry Potter”
Why publishers keep chasing the “next Harry Potter”
In the spring of 1997, Bloomsbury Publishing released a children's novel by an unknown author, printed in a run of five hundred copies, several dozen of which were sent to... Read more...
5 Books That Prove Ernest Hemingway Is the Master of Short Sentences and Long Shadows
5 Books That Prove Ernest Hemingway Is the Master of Short Sentences and Long Shadows
Ernest Hemingway’s legend can get in the way of his sentences. The boats, bullfights, bars, and bravado are easy to caricature; the actual prose is harder to dismiss: lean but... Read more...
Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins: the man on the bridge
The last colossus of bebop died on May 25th, aged 95 On most nights in 1959 and 1960, a very large man could be heard playing the tenor saxophone on... Read more...
Lise Meitner: The Physicist Who Fissioned the Rules of Science (and Took No Credit for It!)
Lise Meitner: The Physicist Who Fissioned the Rules of Science (and Took No Credit for It!)
She made the atom’s fracture sound inevitable, and in doing so exposed a deeper split in how science rewards discovery. Lise Meitner never set out to be a symbol of... Read more...
Mondadori Headquarters
When one man bought Italy's books
The Berlusconi media empire began not with politics, but with publishing Silvio Berlusconi is remembered for many things: three terms as prime minister, a talent for legal evasion, and a... Read more...
5 Books That Prove Vicente Blasco Ibáñez Is a Titan of European Realism
5 Books That Prove Vicente Blasco Ibáñez Is a Titan of European Realism
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez is one of those writers whose reputation has dipped in and out of fashion: once a global bestseller adapted by Hollywood, now a name often tucked away... Read more...
Federico Fellini
10 Things You Might Not Know About Federico Fellini
1. Federico Fellini was born in the town of Rimini, Italy, and spent his childhood there. He was fascinated by the local circus and carnival performers, which would later influence... Read more...
Martin Heidegger: The Man Who Took Being Too Seriously
Martin Heidegger: The Man Who Took Being Too Seriously
He made existence sound urgent, and in doing so made philosophy sound dangerous. In late May 1933, students and professors gathered in Freiburg to hear their new rector speak. The... Read more...
David Hume and the Habit of Doubt
David Hume and the Habit of Doubt
He made skepticism sound like common sense, and in doing so unsettled certainty itself. On an ordinary afternoon in Edinburgh, David Hume liked to walk. Not to pray, not to... Read more...
Niccolò Machiavelli: The Man Who Made Scheming Respectable
Niccolò Machiavelli: The Man Who Made Scheming Respectable
He made manipulation sound like prudence, and in doing so changed how power speaks about itself. Few writers have acquired such a sinister afterlife for their unnerving frankness in describing... Read more...
Marcus Aurelius and the Discipline of the Inner Empire
Marcus Aurelius and the Discipline of the Inner Empire
He made self-mastery sound practical, and in doing so made it political. Few rulers have exercised such quiet influence over posterity with so little regard for their own reputation. Marcus... Read more...
Thomas Jefferson: Contradictions of a Founder, Revisited
Thomas Jefferson: Contradictions of a Founder, Revisited
As America hurtles toward its 250th anniversary in 2026, all eyes turn to the men who dreamed up a nation on the shaky premise of self-evident truths. Thomas Jefferson, born... Read more...
How Samuel Beckett Turned Emptiness into a Running Gag
How Samuel Beckett Turned Emptiness into a Running Gag
He stripped stories of their furniture until only time, pain, and a few stubborn jokes were left standing. On most stages, emptiness is a problem; on Samuel Beckett’s, it is... Read more...
John O’Hara, the Professional Who Told the Truth About His Time
John O’Hara, the Professional Who Told the Truth About His Time
John O’Hara died on April 11th, 1970, in Princeton, New Jersey, convinced that history would one day rank him among the essential American storytellers of the 20th century. That confidence,... Read more...
Casa Carlini Unveils Reimagined Website, Marking a New Chapter on Shopify
Casa Carlini Unveils Reimagined Website, Marking a New Chapter on Shopify
We’ve been hard at work behind the scenes, and we’re excited to share that our newly reimagined Casa Carlini website is now live. Our new online home is faster, more... Read more...
The Poet of Sorrows: Gabriela Mistral and the Grammar of Compassion
The Poet of Sorrows: Gabriela Mistral and the Grammar of Compassion
She wrote of children, grief, and God with a voice at once maternal and austere, turning private sorrow into a public language of moral witness. Gabriela Mistral, born Lucila Godoy... Read more...
James Watson
The Double Helix and Its Discontents: James Watson and the Burden of Discovery
He helped reveal the structure of life itself, then spent the rest of his life proving that scientific brilliance does not guarantee intellectual restraint. James Watson’s name is inseparable from... Read more...
Albert Einstein and the Relativity of Genius
Albert Einstein and the Relativity of Genius
He made the universe strange again, and in doing so, made it comprehensible. Few thinkers have transformed humanity’s understanding of reality as profoundly as Albert Einstein. He held no throne,... Read more...
Jack Kerouac and the Restless Geography of Freedom
Jack Kerouac and the Restless Geography of Freedom
He wrote as if the highway itself were a form of thought—lanes unspooling across the continent while America searched, nervously and noisily, for its own soul.   Few writers captured... Read more...
The Fire That Started a Nation: Topic Presents the Works of Thomas Paine
The Fire That Started a Nation: Topic Presents the Works of Thomas Paine
New York, NY — March 8, 2026 — Few writers have altered the course of history with the force and clarity of Thomas Paine. His words did not merely comment... Read more...
Casa Carlini Launches Etsy Shop to Bring Its Timeless Classics to a Wider Audience
Casa Carlini Launches Etsy Shop to Bring Its Timeless Classics to a Wider Audience
New York, NY — March 7, 2026 — Casa Carlini, the New York–based independent publisher celebrated for its elegant editions of enduring literary works, has launched its official Etsy shop... Read more...
John Steinbeck and the Weight of the American Earth
John Steinbeck and the Weight of the American Earth
He wrote as if the land itself were speaking through him—dust rising, fields failing, men breaking, and hope stubbornly refusing to die. John Steinbeck’s fiction feels rooted in soil. Not... Read more...
W. H. Auden and the Burden of Witness
W. H. Auden and the Burden of Witness
He wrote as if history were breathing down his neck. Wars gathered, ideologies hardened, cities burned, and he answered not with bombast but with tensile clarity. Few twentieth-century poets moved... Read more...
A Childhood Inside the Unthinkable: Fearful in Gaza Reviewed in The New Arab
A Childhood Inside the Unthinkable: Fearful in Gaza Reviewed in The New Arab
What does it mean to grow up afraid, and to have that fear become so familiar it stops feeling like fear at all? That question sits at the heart of... Read more...
Helen Thomas and the Price of Proximity to Power
Helen Thomas and the Price of Proximity to Power
She asked presidents the questions others would not. Then, at the end of her career, she became the story. For nearly half a century, Helen Thomas was a constant presence... Read more...
The “We’re Number One!” Trap and Why It’s Making Us Dumber
The “We’re Number One!” Trap and Why It’s Making Us Dumber
Americans love to say we’re the best. The best country, the smartest people, the hardest workers. We chant it at games, slap it on bumper stickers, and post it online... Read more...
Where Guilt Begins: Carlini Classics Presents the Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky
Where Guilt Begins: Carlini Classics Presents the Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky
New York, NY — February 8, 2026 — Few writers force readers so directly into the moral furnace of the human soul as Fyodor Dostoevsky. His novels do not unfold... Read more...
Charles Dickens: The Man Who Made Capitalism Moral
Charles Dickens: The Man Who Made Capitalism Moral
He made poverty visible, cruelty personal, and bureaucracy ridiculous, and in doing so, taught a new mass society how to recognize itself. Few writers have done more to shape the... Read more...
Club Rules: John O’Hara’s Obsession with Belonging
Club Rules: John O’Hara’s Obsession with Belonging
He wrote like a man eavesdropping at the country club bar, listening not for scandal, but for status, insecurity, and the syntax of American ambition. John O’Hara was a man... Read more...
Thomas Paine and the Radical Simplicity of Revolution
Thomas Paine and the Radical Simplicity of Revolution
He made rebellion sound reasonable, and in doing so helped make it inevitable. On a cold January morning in 1776, a thin pamphlet hit the streets of Philadelphia and began... Read more...
The Great American Pitch
The Great American Pitch
America has many admirable qualities. It has national parks big enough to make you feel insignificant, grocery stores that sell thirty-seven kinds of hummus, and a Constitution that can be... Read more...
When Old Orders Crumble: Antonio Gramsci's Theory of Power
When Old Orders Crumble: Antonio Gramsci's Theory of Power
He spent his life explaining why people accept systems that harm them, and why chaos erupts when they stop. Antonio Gramsci understood power as something quieter and more pervasive than... Read more...
The Inescapable Trap of Belief
The Inescapable Trap of Belief
We like to think we see the world clearly, that our understanding of reality is based on observation and reason. But the truth is more unsettling: every one of us... Read more...
August Strindberg: The Playwright Who Mined His Madness
August Strindberg: The Playwright Who Mined His Madness
He turned marriage into warfare, science into alchemy, and psychological torment into theatrical revolution, then spent decades oscillating between genius and breakdown while Europe watched, appalled and fascinated. August Strindberg... Read more...