Category: Italy

By Corrado Augias

One of Italy's best-known writers takes a Grand journey via her towns, heritage, and literature looking for the real personality of this contradictory country. there's Michelangelo, but additionally the mafia. Pavarotti, but additionally Berlusconi. The debonair Milanese, but in addition the notorious captain of the Costa Concordia cruise send. this is often Italy, favorite and reviled, a rustic that has guarded her secrets and techniques and confounded outsiders. Now, whilst this "Italian paradox" is extra glaring than ever, cultural authority Corrado Augias poses the difficult questions: how did it get this manner? How can this peninsula be concurrently the house of geniuses and criminals, the cradle of good looks and the butt of jokes?

An fast no 1 bestseller in Italy, Augias's newest units out to rediscover the story-different from the history-of this kingdom. starting with how Italy is noticeable from the skin and from the interior, he weaves a geo-historical narrative, passing via significant towns and rereading the classics and the biographies of the folks that experience, for greater or worse, made Italians who they're. From the gloomy surroundings of Cagliostro's Palermo to the stylish courtroom of Maria Luigia in Parma, from the ghetto of Venice to the heroic Neapolitan rebellion opposed to the Nazis, Augias sheds mild at the Italian personality, explaining it to outsiders and to Italians themselves. the result's a "novel of a nation," whose protagonists are either the figures we all know from historical past and literature and characters lengthy hidden among the cracks of old narrative and memory.

By Reid Bramblett

Frommer's transportable Florence bargains every little thing you would like at a look: the head inn selections in all rate levels, the most popular eating places and pubs, San Lorenzo highway industry purchasing, pubs and wine bars, the David, the Duomo, the Boboli gardens, museum publications, and designated local maps. excellent for weekend viewers, households, or enterprise tourists, this convenient advisor captures the easiest of Florence!

By Christopher Storrs

This publication offers with the the most important dating among struggle and nation formation in early glossy Europe. via his participation within the 9 Years warfare (1688-97) and the warfare of the Spanish Succession (1701-14), Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy, got a name for unmatched "Machiavellian" international relations at the foreign level. This booklet places that international relations in context, and considers how the duke raised males and cash (at domestic and abroad), the executive adjustments pressured through battle, the ensuing family pressures, and the way those have been handled.

By Trevor Dean, Chris Wickham

This booklet brings jointly not easy new essays from many of the leaders in Italian scholarship in 3 international locations, to teach the diversity of labor that's at present being performed not just on Florence but in addition on Naples, Ferrara and Lucca and at the dating among towns and nation-state.

By Emma Jones

Visitors were attracted to Florence's architectural and creative treasures for hundreds of years - and for stable cause. yet, with an old middle of merely part a square-mile, it may be challenging to work out the attractions throughout the crowds. The throng at the Duomo steps, the traces for the Uffizi and the jostling for photographs on Piazzale Michelangelo all require a superb dose of persistence. thankfully, early night deals a respite; the quieter streets and softer lights at the moment carry out the colours of the marble-clad cathedral crowned through Filippo Brunelleschi's archetypal dome, the sheer immensity of the Palazzo Vecchio and the attraction of the medieval Ponte Vecchio, with its retailers latched close for the evening. yet averting the traces in the event you input the constructions and museums takes a few training. With too many sights to soak up on someday, discover Florence via sector with those 4 urban walks. the 1st takes you round the old heart, with visits to the non secular points of interest on...

By Elizabeth Wiskemann

Analyzes the nature of Mussolini, the levels of Italian fascism, and the effect on different nations, contrasting it with - specifically - German nationwide Socialism.

By Håkan Gustavsson

British and Italian biplanes clashed over the Mediterranean at Crete and Malta, and in East and North Africa early in international conflict II. either the Gloster Gladiator and the Fiat CR.42 Falco represented the height within the improvement of the biplane fighter, which may hint its lineage again to global struggle I. although, by the point either plane entered provider within the overdue Nineteen Thirties, they have been already out of date. however, they gave sterling provider on all fronts within the Mediterranean and Africa in 1940-41. certainly, the CR.42 was once the Regia Aeronautica's staple fighter in either North and East Africa, Greece and over Malta in 1940-41, in which time its pilots oftentimes fought British and Commonwealth squadrons outfitted usually with Gladiator biplanes. a few sour dogfights have been fought among those kinds because the Allies tried to achieve keep an eye on of the skies over North Africa, Greece and East Africa. either varieties have been flown on the whole by way of hugely skilled pre-war pilots, and this in flip made for a few heavily fought engagements. the 1st recognized strive against among the CR.42 and the Gladiator came about on 14 June 1940 over North Africa and the final engagement among the 2 forms happened on 24 October 1941 over the East African entrance.

By Stanislao G. Pugliese

One of the key figures of twentieth-century ecu literature, Ignazio Silone (1900–78) is the topic of this award-winning new biography via the famous Italian historian Stanislao G. Pugliese.

A founding member of the Italian Communist celebration, Silone took up writing in basic terms after being expelled from the PCI and garnered instant luck along with his first e-book, Fontamara, the main influential and largely translated paintings of antifascism within the Thirties. In global warfare II, the U.S. military revealed unauthorized types of it, in addition to Silone's Bread and Wine, and dispensed them all through Italy in the course of the country's Nazi profession. through the chilly battle, he used to be an outspoken opponent of Soviet oppression and was once two times thought of for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Twenty years after his loss of life, Silone was once the item of controversy while stories arose indicating that he were an informant for the Fascist police. Pugliese's biography, the main accomplished paintings on Silone via some distance and the 1st full-length biography to be released in English, evaluates all of the facts and paints a portrait of a posh determine whose existence and paintings endure topics with modern relevance and resonance. Bitter Spring, the winner of the 2008 Fraenkel Prize in modern historical past, is a memorable biography of 1 of the 20th century's maximum writers opposed to totalitarianism in all its types, set amid essentially the most afflicted moments in sleek heritage.

By Garin Eugenio

By Stephan Beissel; Parkstone Press

Annotation The painter Fra Angelico (c.1395-1455) was once one of the first to take advantage of the innovations of viewpoint proposed via Leon Battista Alberti. His depiction of circulation, in addition to his use of color and facial expressions to spotlight grace and emotion, position him am