Ten years of contributions as a columnist for the newspaper "la Repubblica": as an historian, but also as a critical witness of many, too many, difficult moments for the public ethics of Italy, for the secularity of our state, for the civic values on which our coexistence should be based. Pages from a civil diary, in which historical expertise provides the material for argument, the rigor of method tempers the heat of indignation, and the measured pace of the scholar enhances the ethical quality of the intellectual's denunciation.