Carlo Ginzburg

In 1943, when Carlo Ginzburg was four years old, his father, a critic of fascism, was arrested and tortured to death for participating in the Italian resistance. Influenced by the Annales school of historiography—which stressed long-term social history—Ginzburg has taught at universities in Rome, Bologna, and Los Angeles. His books include The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller and Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.