Terry Gross hosts David Kertzer on NPR's Fresh Air on publication day of The Pope Who Would Be King

See the interview transcript here. 

Steven Spielberg's upcoming film to be The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara

On April 11th Steven Spielberg announced that his upcoming film will be an adaptation of Kertzer's 1997 book The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara. Mark Rylance will star as Pope Pius IX, and Tony Kushner is writing the screenplay.

The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara tells a story of Bologna in 1858, when papal authorities seized a Jewish boy after it was claimed that he had been secretly baptized. He was then raised as a Christian, and his case, as well as his parents' struggle to get him back, would come to represent larger conflicts between the Catholic Church and the revolutionary forces for democracy gaining traction in Italy.

Read about the film in the Wall Street Journal and on Deadline. For more on how the film transpired, see this article in the Jewish Chronicle. To read about the case and its historical background, read this article in The Forward. 

picture credit: Wikimedia Commons

Coming out in April 2018, David Kertzer's new book, The Pope Who Would be King

The violence that erupted in Rome in 1848, the hasty flight of a frightened pope into exile, and the proclamation of the end of the Papal States were among the most dramatic and consequential events of the nineteenth century. Yet today they are practically unknown outside scholarly circles.  The story told in The Pope Who Would Be King is central to understanding Europe’s rocky path to democracy, and the ending of the papacy’s role as a pillar of reaction. It heralded the death knell of rule by divine right in the west and was a crucial step in the struggle to separate church and state. Modern Europe as we know it could finally emerge.

Penguin Random House Book Page

The Pope and Mussolini wins Pulitzer Prize in biography

April 20th, 2015: The Pope and Mussolini, "an engrossing dual biography that uses recently opened Vatican archives to shed light on two men who exercised nearly absolute power over their realims," wins the Pulitzer Prize in the biography category. To read more about the prize on Publisher's Weekly and Brown.edu, click here and here.

"a fast-paced must-read" —Publishers Weekly 

“David Kertzer has an eye for a story, an ear for the right word, and an instinct for human tragedy. They all come together in The Pope and Mussolini to document, with meticulous scholarship and novelistic flair, the complicity between Pius XI and the Fascist leader in creating an unholy alliance between the Vatican and a totalitarian government rooted in corruption and brutality. This is a sophisticated blockbuster.” —Joseph Ellis, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of Revolutionary Summer

The Pope and Mussolini is a History Book Club Main Selection for March 2014 and Pulitzer Prize winner in biography for 2015. 

Published by Random House in North America,  Rizzoli in Italy, and Oxford University Press in the UK. Upcoming publications in 2016 by Les Arènes in France and Individual Editora in Portugal.

RAI 2 broadcasts profile of David Kertzer's Italian research and books

Profile of David Kertzer in Corriere della Serra

Corriere della Sera, Italy's preeminent daily newspaper, publishes an extended profile of David Kertzer and the origins of his interest in Italian history on February 16th, 2016. Read the article here.

Picture credit: Carlo Lannutti

The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara

National Book Award finalist for nonfiction, 1997

Bologna, 1858: A police squad, acting on the orders of the Inquisitor, invades the home of a Jewish merchant, Momolo Mortara, wrenches his crying six-year-old son from his arms, and rushes him off in a carriage bound for Rome. His mother is so distraught that she collapses and has to be taken to a neighbor's house, but her weeping can be heard across the city. With this terrifying scene--one that would haunt this family forever--David I. Kertzer begins his fascinating investigation of the dramatic kidnapping, and shows how this now obscure saga would eventually contribute to the collapse of the Church's temporal power in Italy. 

Kertzer on MSNBC's Morning Joe show

On MSNBC's Morning Joe Show, David Kertzer discusses the role of the papacy in politics, both today, as Pope Francis addresses climate change, and, as described in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Pope and Mussolini, in the past, when Pope Pius XI, a religious figure, made a deal with Mussolini, a political one. Watch the video here.

Moritz Oppenheim's "The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara"

Moritz Oppenheim's painting, "The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara," has triggered international interest. Its sale for over $400,000. at an auction at Sotheby's in New York on December 17 is discussed in this article in The Tablet Magazine. The article includes a lengthy interview with David Kertzer about the Mortara case, the lost painting, and about his new book, The Pope and Mussolini.

David Kertzer discusses 'The Pope and Mussolini' at the Watson Institute for International Studies

Book panel for The Pope and Mussolini Featuring National Book Award finalist and Watson Faculty Fellow, David Kertzer.

Watch here

David Kertzer Speaks With Alfred Fox Uhry

Pulitzer and Academy Award-winning playwright and screenwriter Alfred Fox Uhry joins Kertzer in conversation about the overwhelming evidence that suggests Mussolini could not have established his dictatorship without Vatican support.

Watch here 

Appearances

C-SPAN2 Book TV 

David Kertzer appeared on C-SPAN2 Book TV on Sunday, February 9th to discuss his book, The Pope and Mussolini. 

Watch here

NPR: Fresh Air Interview 

David Kertzer appeared on NPR's Fresh Air on January 27. He discussed his book, The Pope and Mussolini, with host Dave Davies.

Listen here