I grew up in Berkeley, California, a product of integrated schooling and progressive thinking. After high school I took a gap sexennial that included study and travel in Europe (during whiih I abandoned thoughts of pursuing a career as a musician), a year working in a bank in San Francisco, restaurant work and a modelling agency stint (same city), a year (almost) of language study and travel in Italy, and another working on a cruise ship (including an around-the-world cruise).

 

At the end of that interlude, I enrolled at UC Berkeley and over the following ten years earned four degrees: a BA in history, 2 MA’s (History and Demography), and a Ph.D. (History). The latter included a year and a half doing research in Italy (mostly Rome). Through the mentorship and friendship of Italian demographer and historian Massimo Livi Bacci, I got a two-year post-doctoral position at the Institute for Population Research in Rome and was able to complete work on my first book, Dictating Demography: The Problem of Population in Fascist Italy (Cambridge 1996 and Il Mulino 1997) that won the American Historical Association Marraro Prize for the best book on Italian history.

 

Before and while a student I worked as a server at the Broadway Terrace Café in Oakland, a restaurant at the vanguard of the culinary revolution taking place in California in those years. That earlier involvement in that milieu has played no small part in my recent pursuits.

 

Although I could have lived in Rome forever, at the end of that two-year stint I was fortunate enough to be offered a tenure track job at Indiana University in Bloomington. The Midwest was unknown to me at that point and yet I have made it my home now for over three decades. During a satisfying career at IU, I taught thousands of undergrads (and a few grads too) and pursued a rewarding career. My next research project focused on marginalized children in Liberal Italy (1860-1922). It was a topic that derived from my demographic interests – the first book included a chapter on children under Fascism – and I got the idea and began research in earnest while a fellow at the American Academy in Rome (1998-99). That work culminated in Italy in the Age of Pinocchio: Children and Danger in the Liberal Era (Palgrave, 2006). By a strange turn of events, at about the time I was finishing up that book I was approached by a Kansas City law firm and asked if I would be interested in working on the issue of smoking and health in Italy. The law firm represented the big tobacco manufacturers, and they asked me to research knowledge in Italy of the health risks of cigarette smoking and the difficulty of quitting for the period 1950–65. Big tobacco was of course being sued by the family of an inveterate Italian smoker who had migrated to the US in that period. You could say I went to the dark side. The unfortunate smoker in question had already succumbed to lung cancer, and, as was almost always the case, tobacco won the case (in this case by summary judgement). With that start, I spent the next few years continuing to research tobacco and smoking in Italy, expanding the timeframe and asking additional questions. In 2016 I published Fumo: Italy’s Love Affair with the Cigarette (Stanford; Le Monnier 2019).

 

My olive oil research started at about that time. On one of my return trips to the American Academy in Rome I met, ironically for the first time, Alice Waters of Chez Panisse. Ironic as I had grown up two miles from the restaurant and even applied there once for a job. We chatted about the Rome Sustainable Food Project she had started at the Academy and also the Yale Sustainable Food Project started when her daughter Fanny attended New Haven’s best known university. I offered that I might start a similar initiative at IU, and Alice said if I did she would be the cheerleader. To make a long story short, I did just that and, true to her word, Alice attended a multi-day celebration in Bloomington.

 

Having entered into the world of food studies and having finished the smoking book, I needed a new topic. I was an Italian historian with some background in food service, and my friend and former employer had become a producer of award-winning olive oil in California. The history of Minerva’s elixir suggested itself. As with previous projects I delved into the relevant literature, primary and secondary. I started of course with Italy, the most important region (not a country till 1860) for oil production, technology, and trade starting at least in the Middle Ages. And while Spain today far outproduces their Mediterranean neighbors, Italy still led the way in technological, legislation and trade into the second half of the twentieth century, and its brands are still the most recognizable ones in the world. But oil history is global so I have also consulted Spanish, British, and American sources. England dominated the import market in the 18th and 19th centuries - almost entirely for industrial purposes - while the US has been the most important market for food oil since Mediterranean immigrants, mostly Italians, began demanding toward the end of the 19th c.

 

My oil research also took me in new and interesting directions. I met producers and have visited farms and olive mills now in three continents. I trained as a taster and took a course in olive milling that included insights into the complex world of olive oil chemistry. And I met and spoke with experts on oil milling and technology, olive cultivation, and the analysis of oils. As described elsewhere on this site, that research has led to my forthcoming The True History of Olive Oil (LSU Press) and continuing explorations for a subsequent volume, a combination of olive oil memoir and olive oil manual, that I will be describing in my Substack L’oliandolo.