From Venetian canals to Vatican conclaves, New York Times correspondent Jason Horowitz takes you on a tour of the real Italy.
Italy’s deep history, stunning landscapes and glorious food have uniquely captured our imagination. In The Italian Job, Jason Horowitz, a longtime Rome bureau chief for The New York Times, tells the story of how he too fell under that Tuscan-sun enchantment before ultimately discovering a more fascinating place in the country’s long shadows. He shows us an Italy conducting experiments in populist politics, confronting global challenges like immigration, climate change and an aging population.
In telling this story, Horowitz introduces us to an extraordinary range of characters. He flies with popes and drinks Spritzes with prime ministers, talks beauty with top fashion designers in Milan, ponders the big questions with cardinals in Rome, and gets his feet wet in the Venice lagoon with engineers trying to save the sinking city. Throughout, Italy’s streets, layered with history, and its cafés, vibrating with conversation, are full of lessons. So is his life at home, where his Italian wife and their two children offer an even more intimate, concentrated and rollicking view of Italian life. As years pass and the world turns upside down, Italy, more than a vacation destination or land of the past, reveals itself as a vivid lens through which to understand our present and future.
Jason Horowitz is a senior European correspondent for The New York Times who worked for nearly a decade as the paper’s Rome bureau chief, covering Italy, the Vatican, and the region’s culture and politics. He was part of the team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting. He got his start in journalism in Rome, where he met his wife as a young reporter, and for more than a quarter century maintained a connection to Italy, both personally and politically. Prior to joining The New York Times in 2013, Jason was the roving political features and profiles writer at The Washington Post, and he has written for The New Yorker, GQ, Vogue, Observer, and other publications. He has two children.
Horowitz will be in conversation with Maureen Dowd.