In Italian, the fact itself that there is a single word for both means that the distinction isn't sharp. If you like, the history of the 20th century is like a story that smashed smaller, personal stories. On the other hand, a single person can have a history too...

Not completely unrelated: one of the major novels by Italian writer Elsa Morante (and one of the major Italian novels overall) is entitled La Storia, with a capital letter – which is not the rule for Italian titles – referring both to history, which overwhelms the novel's characters (a similar notion to De Luca's), and at the same time to the importance of their own story.

In Italian, the fact itself that there is a single word for both means that the distinction isn't sharp. If you like, the history of the 20th century is like a story that smashed smaller, personal stories. On the other hand, a single person can have a history too...

Let me phrase this better: just because in English there are two different words corresponding to this single Italian word, it doesn't mean that Italians have each time in mind one of the two (different but overlapping) meanings. Moreover, in Italian it would be perfectly normal to utter a sentence like: Ti racconto una storia, la storia di Roma, which would perhaps be translated in English as “Let me tell you a story, the history of Rome”, while there is not as clear-cut a difference in Italian.

Not completely unrelated: one of the major novels by Italian writer Elsa Morante (and one of the major Italian novels overall) is entitled La Storia, with a capital letter – which is not the rule for Italian titles – referring both to history, which overwhelms the novel's characters (a similar notion to De Luca's), and at the same time to the importance of their own story.