2014 Program
Event #23
Alessandro Barbero
How Do Wars Break Out? World War II
On 23 August 1939 Hitler and Stalin signed a non-aggression pact, and on 1 September Hitler invaded Poland, hoping that the democratic powers, France and Britain, would not intervene. He was mistaken: that day a war broke out that would end only six years later and would cause destruction on a scale the world had never known before. But why did the negotiations led by Stalin in view of an alliance with the democratic countries fail, convincing him to embark on that unnatural alliance with Nazi Germany? And what drove France and Britain to intervene, when the year before they had passively witnessed the invasion of Austria and Czechoslovakia by the Nazis, giving Hitler the feeling that no one would stop him this time either?
Alessandro Barberois a historian and a writer and a tenured professor of Medieval History at Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale e Vercelli. He writes for La Stampa and Tuttolibri. He is a contributor on the television program Superquark and the shows Il tempo e la storia and a.C.d.C., broadcast by Rai Storia. His publications include: Benedette guerre. Crociate e jihad («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2009), Lepanto. La battaglia dei tre imperi («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2010), Donne, madonne, mercanti e cavalieri. Sei storie medievali («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2013), published by Laterza; Gli occhi di Venezia (Mondadori, 2011); Il divano di Istanbul (Sellerio, 2011); Dietro le quinte della Storia. La vita quotidiana attraverso il tempo, written with P. Angela (Rizzoli, 2012); Le Ateniesi (Mondadori, 2015); Costantino il vincitore (Salerno Editrice, 2016); Le parole del papa (2016) and Caporetto (2017), published by Laterza. Il divano di Istanbul (2011), Alabama (2021) and Poeta al comando (2022), published by Sellerio.
Event #20
Paolo Cornaglia Ferraris, Marcello Massimini
The Secret of the Consciousness and its Measurement
