Italy Books

The book starts from venice and works its way down to sicily. It has much information and it is all easy with maps of the sub regions to help out. It also has a good general words of travel wisdom in the front.

Great book. Thought the word of mouth section throughout the book was very useful given that it was filled with recommendations from everyday people. Interactive Maps also easy to use.

My wife and I travel often, and recently we started taking our kids along with us. I personally love to have many guides while planning the trip. For my North Italy trip I had: (1) The Rough Guide to Italy (2006); (2) The Green Guide - Italy - by Michelin (2006); (3) Let's Go Italy 2006; (4) A 2002 edition of an AA (British) guide to Tuscany; (5) Fodor's Italy 2006; (6) A set of more localized books; (7) The internet.

Buying Fodor's was almost an afterthought, as I was sure it would not contribute to our trip - we love to get off the beaten trek in our sightseeing, and then also spend part time tracking typical local customs such as agricultural, religious, culinary and artistic activities, which usually are not mentioned in guidebooks. I was really surprised to find quite a few such activities listed in Fodor's. For example, it showed us that we could join a tour demonstrating the preparation of the famous Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese, and it was this book that convinced us to spend 2 full days for visiting 5 ancient villages hanging on the cliffs above the sea - the Cinque Terre. It also highlights activities that are of higher interest for children. The guide's layout is easy to navigate and inviting, and the writing never tedious. I found myself turning more and more to this book as my first source of information, and only afterwards complementing my knowledge from the others.

The downsides of the book are obvious - the hotels and restaurants mentioned are good, but the choice is rather limited, and not intended for those on a budget, or for those looking for that local neighborhood restaurant. For this, the internet (starting with sites like tripadvisor.com and virtualtourist.com) is the best source, complemented by some of the other guides mentioned above. But Fodor's is my preferred a source for the initial planning of the trip.

I just got this last night and let me say, I cant put it down. It has so much info. If you like wine tasting , try these areas,,or hiking,try this region. It has lots of tips and is well written and going to be a great help when I make it to Italy. If you are looking for a good book to help narrow down areas you want to see like I was,this is the book for you.
Enjoy and Ciao!

This book is an excellent tool if you are going to Italy...visited 10 cities and several side excursions..used the book for EVERYTHING I needed to know where ever I was!! Certainly worth the price...don't leave home without it!!

The Fodor's guide is the best guide to Italy out of all the other major travel guide brands. I looked at all of the books and eventually chose this one.

Just as a background, I will be going to Italy (Venice, Florence, Rome) on an educational trip in 2009.

This guide will give an overview of each area (eateries, places to see, things to do, hotels) but then gives a detailed list of everything. Maps are provided for easy locating.

There is also a giant tear-out map which is also a plus.

This book was considered alongside Lonely Planet, Frommers, and Rick Steve.

I will definitely get the 2009!

My household is full of eaters who are allergic to dairy products - but are Italian and love Italian food. Bugialli's book on Sardinian cooking saved the day. This book lets US-based cooks, using common (or easy to find) ingredients, create authentic Italian dishes that taste wonderful and are virtually dairy-free. The desserts section, of course, relies fairly heavily on dairy products. But the flavors provided by the main courses are so intense and clean, you can skip dessert and still be completely satisfied. Grazie, Signor Bugialli

This cookbook is stunning. It is done in the oversized format with lots of pictures and details. Mr. Bugialli gives information about the food and the people. I think I went through this book 2-3 times just looking at it and reading it before I even looked at the recipes. Good stuff in here, especially if you like seafood. (What else would people on an island eat?)Some of the items may be difficult, if not impossible to find, but he gives easy substitutions for most of them.

If you are familiar with the Sardinian area and the food of the land, you will LOVE this book. It is beautifully written and the pictures will astound you. Take the time to buy and enjoy this book, you'll have it for a long time.

I read this book as a child and loved it.
I am pleasantly surprised to see it still in print.
"Francis and Clare, Saints of Assisi" is immensely readable and entertaining enough for an elementary school reader.
Helen Walker Homan provides a nice introduction to two quite human saints: a nice Catholic primer in the development of faith.

The reading level of this book is challenging enough for my 10 year old son, and enjoyable for us to read aloud together. This book brings to life the story about St. Francis, and made us feel like we knew him personally. It showed my son that saints had real lives, they were children who played just like kids do now, and they chose to serve God. My son and I both enjoyed reading this book.

It is a delightful story of the saints of Assisi intented for the young people, written by Helen Walker Homan and illustratd by John Lawn. The oft-written story of these saints becomes alive in 12 short chapters in simple language, readable for young adults. I am sure that a lot of research and exploration have gone into this work. The early 12th century Assisi becomes alive with the castles, market places, taverns and churches. The saints become normal and real, like the everyday people we meet. At the same time their sanctity and uniqueness in history are well brought out. Indeed it is a well-written book for beginners.

This is a beautiful volume covering the period on Northern European (Northern Renassaince) Art and its unmistakable influence on and how it helped to form, the slightly later period of Italian Renaissance masterpieces. Reproductions (excellent) and comparisons of the legacy the Flemish works is carefully, interestingly and convincingly postulated here.

I think this book is a valuable, well-written, addition for anyone drawn to these respective, but related, incompable periods of artistic accomplishment both in painting and sculpture by author Nuttall. You won't regret owning this book.

Firstly, this is a screaming bargain. 258 plates, many with lesser-known but important works, details and magnifications not easily seen elsewhere. Excellent quality printing and, though primarily aimed at academics, fairly easy to read with a minimum of artspeak.
Though an amateur reading a work of impressive scholarship, extensively referenced and annotated, I greatly enjoyed Dr. Nuttal's very well-told explanation of the sea change in Italian, especially Florentine, art caused by the exposure to, and cultivation of, the Flemish Primitives by the Italian merchant-bankers, especially the Medici and their agents in Brugge. There have been several major works about the Flanders/Italian art relationship, upon which this nicely focuses especially from a compositional and technique view. To completely detail the relationships of other city-states, the French duchies, the Hansa, the economic crises, the eventual effect on England would take many more volumes.
One can see much more in the era's incredible paintings and sculpture when one can see the connections between artists, between patrons, the Church and how they all influenced each other. For me this was a book I will refer to many times, and is greatly underpriced, recommended of course to art historians and students, but also to anyone who loves the era. Beware those who denigrate Memling... The Italians certainly didn't. And now you'll see why.

I suppose this should really be somewhere between four and five stars. I have always loved early Netherlandish painting, and this book shows how the Italians of the the early fifteenth century were a good generation behind the Northern painters in technique and achievement: artists like Massaccio, when compared to Robert Campin or Van der Weyden appear awkward and inept, the use of perspective artificial and stilted - it is no wonder that contemporary Italians so valued Northern art during the mid fifteenth century. It took Leonardo and Michelangelo to overtake painters like Van de Weyden from over fifty years earlier. However, there appears to be a gradual deterioration in quality as the century moved on, from the superb works of Campin, Van der Weyden and Jan Van Eyck to the rather mediocre productions of Memlinc, and the utterly awful Petrus Christus - interesting to see though, that the latter was greatly valued by one of the Medicis. By the end of the century, what is left over from the stunning realism and gravitas of the Ghent alterpiece is a sort of sacharine pastiche meriting Michaelangelo's acid comments (one also supposes that the great Northern alterpieces of the early quatrocento were not available in Italy). Overall, the book is beautifully produced, with comparisons of contemporaneous paintings by Northern and Italian artists (although I feel some of the assertions of influence may be a little far-fetched - after all, how many possible variations of pose are there in a three quarter view of a kneeling angel from the back?). Quality of reproduction is good, and the text gives interesting insight into the taste and viewpoints of the period. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in the Renaissance.

I purchased this book while visiting relatives in New York. I found it to be an excellent beginning for anyone interested in the people and events that made Italy what it is today. With brief, readable essays the author conveys the origins not only of the Italian nation, but also the motives behind why Italians look at the world the way they do. The author blends the historical with the personal and his essays convey a sense of what it means to be Italian.

I found the essays included here engaging, analytical, and interesting. I have read the author's fiction works and I like his style of writing. I found this book much more rewarding than the often sterile analysis of the Risorgimento that you find from historians writing about the period. The personal essays the author included add to an understanding of the Italian people.

Garibaldi's Ghosts is an excellent resource for those who want to know the reasons why their ancestors left their homes in Italy. Many Italian Americans do not know the plight of the Southern Italian immigrants short of family stories. Mr. DeAngelo's short and easy to read essays reveal what was going on in Italy during the Risorgimento period and how it affected the impoverished South. Many of these factors were lost on the poor and illiterate, yet they were the ones most affected. Garibaldi's Ghosts finally sheds light on the birth-pangs of the modern Italian nation.

If you want to teach your child about a great saint, this is the book. It has pictures and easy words. Really good.

If you want to teach your children about a great saint, this is the book. Both the illustrations and text are perfect for kids. I wish she would write about the other saints too.

This well written book will be a treasure for any child's library. Saint Francis of Assisi was one of the great Christians of the world. The message of simple living is one that children need to hear today. The drawings are delicately beautiful and very meaningful to the story.

The word to describe this novel is "haunting." I might also suggest "aching." The characters are caught in a situation they don't understand, at the mercy of microbes and superstition. The reader wants to cry out a warning to the characters across the centuries, but the nightmare plays out in silence. The new disease of syphilis destroys their bodies, their hopes, and their very lives, and our modern knowledge cannot help them.

The author knows his medicine and his medieval remedies, and he knows the dread history of the venerial diseases that American Indians exported to Europe through the voyages of Columbus. The innocent young prostitute/healer who is the focus of the story has a special curse: she carries the disease and spreads it, but cannot quite find the panacea to save the people she loves.

Trapped in ignorance and supersition. Without quite saying so, author Mosher lets us know that modern society is equally trapped, and equally vulnerable. Does sunburn cause cancer? Does a diet of meat cause heart disease? We think we know, but our medical theories will seem like charms and poultices to our grandchildren.

The cures to our ills will come... but not in time.

This is a powerful book that teaches powerful lessons. It will take a strong reader to face it.

A great read that takes you into the late 15 th century and lets you watch as both a love, a war, and an epidemic unfold. It's historically accurate, and fun to read.

A thoughtful and thought-provoking book, that unfolds as all great stories do, with suspense, adventure, romance and wisdom. It was a great experience to live back in 1493, in the midst of gripping turmoil with these vivid characters, and to be desperately rooting for reason to overcome ignorance and prejudice. The writer's voice is sure and strong and we know we are in good hands from the onset. A great read that I would recommend to all-an opportunity to be totally lost in a story and learn much to ponder for some time to come.

This is a great cookbook. It truly lives up to the claims of its title. The recipes with the lemon herb crepes are wonderful and I've added them to my list of things I serve company. We had the salmon picatta a couple of weeks ago and will definitely make it again. I also like how he suggests ways to tailor the recipes for vegetarians.

Lots of people will try a couple of recipes and then proclaim a cookbook good or bad. Well, I've used this cookbook for almost 5 months, and I've tested a lot of recipes now! My doctor recommended a Mediterranean diet when my blood pressure and weight got out of control. I had picked this cookbook up somewhere but had never used it. After my doctor read me the riot act, I dusted if off and for the last few months have cooked 50% of my meals from it. My husband, for the first time in 10 years, thinks I'm a good cook! I've lost 20 lbs and my BP is now almost in the normal range. Do I sound like a paid endorser; well, I'm not! I mean it's only part of the plan. I also eat properly at all my meals and get exercise. It's not one of those miracle plans you see on TV! But the food is beautiful, delicious, low fat and easy to prepare. What more could you want?! .... If I only owned 2-3 cookbooks this would be one of them. .... I mean it, this is just a very good book! Buy it, but only if you really plan to cook with it!

I'm always looking for new low-fat recipes, especially Italian, and this book is fantastic. After just a week of owning it, I can heartily recommend "Chicken with Balsamic Vinegar", "Chicken Alla Diavola" and "Mashed Potatoes with Sun-dried Tomatoes" (who've thought of that one! )

The recipes were easy to follow, simple to make (depending on your definition of simple) and offered plenty of flavour.

The introduction provides good information on various ingredients in Italian cooking (and low-fat Italian cooking), and the recipes offer antipasti, pasta in its many forms, vegetarian dishes, soups, desserts and more.

Definitely one of the best cookbook buys I've made recently!

For many of us at the turning point of age 60 or 70, the challenge of how to look ahead,at a time when we are often burdened by looking back,becomes central in our daily lives.

" A Hole in the Water" Mae Briskin'slatest novel, tells the story of Anne,age67,recently widowed,as she sets out to find explanations for some troublesome events in her past. The experiences and encounters thar develop, and her reckonings along the way, lead to a dramatic conclusion. It is an engrossing story, bound to challenge the reader's own reckonings.

Anne has been a housewife for decades: now she's an author and talk show host handling social issues and an ongoing concern over a long-missing daughter. She's drawn to girls who may have been her daughter, to a married man who has helped her search, and to a life and world filled with complicated choices. An absorbing story of an examined life.

In "A Hole in the Water," Mae Briskin has written an emotiional and intelligent exploration of a woman on her own. She uses memories and anticipation to fuel our desire to accompany the heroine, Anne, on her journey. And carry us along she does. From the earliest pages, we are intrigued with this woman who is traveling to Italy to search for a lost daughter and a possible lover, and to pay homage to catholics who she knows helped the Jews during World War II.

Anne is seeking "the pleasures of the senses," but she wants moral and ethical behavior to accompany them. We discover that she is witty, wise, angry, fallible, human, loving, and vulnerable. Looking back, she learns. Looking ahead, she is strengthened by every new experience and is optimistic about her own capacities for good.

Briskin treats many disparate themes, ranging from the Pope's conduct during the Nazi era, through the confused fidelity between parents and children, and the vagaries of adultery, with compassion and even humor. We care about Anne and the other characters who inhabit her world, who are all distinctly drawn. The reader is left with much to think about, including the fact that this book is truly a pleasure to read.