L'ULTIMA DINASTIA - The Last Dynasty. The Saga of the Agnelli from Giovanni to John with Jennifer Clark

The Italian Radio Hour

This week on The Italian Radio Hour: L'ULTIMA DINASTIA - The Last Dynasty, the Saga of the Agnelli from Giovanni to John with Jennifer Clark.

Maybe you’ve heard of Gianni Agnelli. You’ve most likely heard of car manufacturer Fiat. But you might not know the rest of the Agnelli family — Giovanni, Margherita, Edoardo, John — and the both inspiring and tragic stories of an industrial family dynasty that is as much a symbol of modern Italy as the vintage Fiat 500.In Italy, the Agnelli family has been an inescapable presence for more than a century — their influence seeping into fashion, sports, politics and media, the vicissitudes of their businesses and personal lives splashed across tabloids and newspapers alike. But the details, belonging as they do to this powerful faction of the upper crust, have often remained sealed within the stoic family villas.Jennifer Clark, a journalist originally from Chicago, covered business from Milan for nearly two decades before she began exclusively writing about the automotive industry for four years. She was always aware of the Agnelli family, as much as anyone in Italy is, but became particularly intrigued by the century-long saga of the family while covering Fiat’s financial struggles in the 2000s. Clark began combing through Fiat archives and interviews to write her first book Mondo Agnelli: Fiat, Chrysler and the Power of a Dynasty (Wiley, 2011), which inspired a 2018 HBO documentary, Agnelli. Now, coinciding with Fiat’s 125th year, Clark has woven a more intimate narrative of the lives of "Italy’s Kennedys" in her new book L’ultima dinastia — in English, “The Last Dynasty” — published by Solferino Libri.