Alexander Stille

Who is Alexander Stille?

Alexander Stille is an American author and journalist. He is the son of Ugo Stille, a well-known Italian journalist and a former editor of Italy's Milan-based Corriere della Sera newspaper. Alexander Stille graduated from Yale and later the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has written many articles on the subject of Italy, in particular its politics and the Mafia.

His first book, Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism, was chosen by the Times Literary Supplement as one of the best books of 1992 and received the Los Angeles Times book award.

In 1995 he wrote Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic, an investigation into the Sicilian Mafia in the latter-half of the twentieth century and in particular the events leading up to the major crackdown against the criminal organization in the 1990s following the bloodthirsty reign of Salvatore Riina. The book was dedicated to the memory of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. The events outlined in the book were made into a 1999 movie of the same name.