Giovanna Dell'Orto is Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota, where she received her Ph.D. in 2004. She was a reporter for The Associated Press in three US states and Italy. She is the author of The Hidden Power of the American Dream: Why Europe's Shaken Confidence in the United States Threatens the Future of US Influence (2008) and Giving Meanings to the World: The First US Foreign Correspondents, 1838–1859 (2002) and co-author (with Hazel Dicken-Garcia) of Hated Ideas and the American Civil War Press (2008).