A historian and columnist for «Corriere della Sera», he is also a full professor of contemporary history at the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane in Florence. In 1998, he wrote L’identità italiana (published by Il Mulino), the first volume of a series dedicated to the same subject which he edited. A study of various processes of erosion of national identity returns in La morte della patria, La crisi dell’idea di nazione tra Resistenza, antifascismo e Repubblica (published by Laterza, 2003). Tre giorni nella storia d’Italia (Il Mulino, 2010) analyzes the three historic events which, according to Galli Della Loggia, changed the country. Executive editor of a two-volume history of the «Corriere della Sera» (Rizzoli-Fondazione Corriere della Sera, 2011), he published in 2011 Pensare l’Italia (with Aldo Schiavone, Einaudi) and the anthology Poesia civile e politica dell’Italia del Novecento (Rizzoli). His latest work, Europa perduta?, (Il Mulino, 2014) was written jointly with Giuliano Amato.