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To tourists or casual observers, Italy might appear to be one giant museum—brimming with beautiful art but somewhat stuck in the past—that plays only a marginal role in global affairs.  A new book by Jason Horowitz, an American journalist who spent much of the last quarter century in Italy, paints a different picture: of a nation that has served as a laboratory for political trends that spread across Europe and the United States.

After learning the ropes of journalism in Rome working for a variety of news outlets, Horowitz married the daughter of an Italian diplomat, then later spent nearly a decade as the New York Times’ Rome bureau chief (when he finally went “native,” as he puts it, becoming an Italian citizen). His memoir, The Italian Job, reads both as a reflection on his personal and professional experiences in the country and on its recent political history.

To tourists or casual observers, Italy might appear to be one giant museum—brimming with beautiful art but somewhat stuck in the past—that plays only a marginal role in global affairs.  A new book by Jason Horowitz, an American journalist who spent much of the last quarter century in Italy, paints a different picture: of a nation that has served as a laboratory for political trends that spread across Europe and the United States.

The Italian Job: A Memoir of an American Reporter in Rome, Jason Horowitz, Celadon, 352 pp., $29.99, October 2026

After learning the ropes of journalism in Rome working for a variety of news outlets, Horowitz married the daughter of an Italian diplomat, then later spent nearly a decade as the New York Times’ Rome bureau chief (when he finally went “native,” as he puts it, becoming an Italian citizen). His memoir, The Italian Job, reads both as a reflection on his personal and professional experiences in the country and on its recent political history.

The book is infused with an evident love for Italy and Italians, yet one of its central arguments is that the country has paved the way for the rise of the modern far right.

A sizable share of the book is devoted to Silvio Berlusconi, a media tycoon who first became prime minister in the mid-1990s and, as the leader of the center-right Forza Italia party, dominated Italy’s political life for 20 years. Berlusconi, who died in 2023, resigned in ignominy in 2011 amid an acute financial crisis that threatened to send the eurozone’s third-largest economy into default—and after facing a scandal stemming from his infamous “bunga bunga” parties.

Horowitz dwells on how Berlusconi served as a model for future U.S. President Donald Trump, and he is hardly the first to draw comparisons between the two leaders—both wealthy businessmen with a penchant for norm-busting behavior. But as an American journalist with experience covering the political scenes of both Rome and Washington, Horowitz is........

© Foreign Policy