Word: capo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Inzerillo mob family of Palermo has long been referred to by a somewhat wistful moniker: gli Scappati, the Runaways. More than 20 years ago, the surviving Inzerillos had been "allowed" to flee their home island by the then Sicilian boss of bosses Toto Riina. The bloodthirsty capo had killed dozens of their brothers, cousins, uncles and fathers in a mob war in the early 1980s, a conflict that cemented Riina's Corleone clan as the supreme rulers of Sicily's crime syndicate, also known as Cosa Nostra. Mafia experts say Riina was on his way to exterminating the rest...
...native always seemed to know how to wind up on the winning side of internal feuds, a gift that eventually made him supreme boss in the Sicilian capital. But Lo Piccolo wanted more: control over the entire island of Sicily, expanded cooperation with U.S. mobsters, even the title of capo dei capi - the boss of bosses...
...Palermo in Sicily, a bust immediately hailed as a major victory for the Italian state in its ongoing battle against organized crime. Lo Piccolo, 65, was considered the unrivaled leader of the world's best-known crime syndicate, Cosa Nostra (Our Thing), after the April 2006 capture of legendary capo Bernardo Provenzano. He had been a fugitive since 1983. Salvatore Lo Piccolo was the only one able to take over the mantle from Provenzano, Italy's top Mafia prosecutor Piero Grasso told reporters...
...fill was his own old job, to head of the Vatican office that oversees doctrinal orthodoxy. His choice of the then Archbishop of San Francisco, William J. Levada, was the first sign that Benedict would take his own counsel on key personnel changes. Defying conventional wisdom that the doctrinal capo had to be a European intellectual heavy hitter, the Pope chose the shy California native whom he'd known well when they worked together in Rome in the early 1980s. By choosing Levada it was also evident that the Vatican's theologian-in-chief would remain the former Cardinal Ratzinger...
...like that one from seventh grade. Already the carefree August nights have given way to meaningful conversations (a.k.a. nagging) about the summer reading that didn't get done. So what could be more welcome than two new books assailing this bane of modern family life: The Homework Myth (Da Capo Press; 243 pages), by Alfie Kohn, the prolific, perpetual critic of today's test-driven schools, and The Case Against Homework (Crown; 290 pages), a cri de coeur by two moms, lawyer Sara Bennett and journalist Nancy Kalish...