Parma Books

Ranulph Fiennes is a remarkable person who set out to achieve what most considered impossible. From circumnavigating the Earth's polar axis to discovering a lost ancient city in Arabia to gut-wrenching unsupported polar treks, Fiennes shares the ups and downs of a life lived in full.

Here are the finely-distilled lessons learned of an intrepid spirit, told through captivating stories of adventure and magnificent photographs.

This book provides hard-earned, sage advice for people from all walks of life. Recommended.

Sir Randolph Fiennes has been called the 'world's greatest living explorer': he's spent thirty years circumnavigating the globe, broken many exploration records, and has had both high and low moments in the process, so it's little surprise BEYOND THE LIMITS provides such a fascinating memoir and examination of these points. Ranulph Fiennes's lifetime of adventures is documented in a vivid series of lessons: add color photos and you have an outstanding achievement.

Briefly put: Format exceptional, well written, entertaining, and quality balloon creations await those who purchase this.

The Short Review - Buy The Book, You'll Be Glad You Did

Thiswas my first exposure to the 3 performers - Wally, Arlene, and Yummy - who put out a lot of this material in earlier, do-it-yourself volumes. I'm glad I waited, because their work deserves the quality of this book. At 138 pages, this single book gives you all the material from their first 3 books, plus new stuff created just for this edition. It also gives you a book long enough to really get to know the WAY Cool authors, and they are delightful people. People you would be proud to have as friends. They are also working performers, and the sculptures in this book come from their working collection. This way, you don't get what 'might' be a good idea, if someone works the bugs out. You get the best of what they offer their clients, the people who pay them to entertain. There are no duds in this book!

What is in the book? Just about everything you could want. For now, how about the most concise, thorough, and best organized introductory material for beginning balloon sculptors? (I'll get to the other stuff in a minute.) We're talking about _all_ the twists that sculptors use, along with a bunch of eyes to draw on your characters, and balloon eyes to keep the sculpture three dimensional. ... you get the secrets of making jaw dropping balloon sculptures. And this is just the first 7 pages. Wait until you hear about the next 131 pages of pure sculpture material.

Sculptures - Cartoons to Chickens

The book starts with an Astronaut and Alien. The astronaut wears a clear helmet, and the alien sits in a flying saucer, under a clear dome. This last part is tricky, but if you achieve it, you have a balloon sculpture that will get you in the local newspaper, and hired for more jobs. This sculpture is the most complicated one of the bunch, and an example of how far the WAY Cool authors will take you on a quest to expand the frontiers of balloon creation. Along the way you'll meet the one balloon mermaid, and her sisters, who get dressed in a formal ball gown. You'll master the art of the rubber chicken, make a Pocket Monster that will have you mobbed (I was), and learn to make a fast but intricate flower that will wow your audiences.

The pages are easy to read, and every sculpture begins with a complete list of balloons needed. They comment on the sculptures in the diagrams, offering ideas for holiday variations and personal preference suggestions. The authors also put a ton of jokes and lines into the book, so you have several ways to present (or think about presenting) every sculpture. The sculptures are built on 260s (the usual long, narrow balloon twisters use) but they use a lot of additional balloons - hearts, Geos, rounds, and 160s - to give new dimensions and depth to the sculptures. You may need to order a few balloons to make the sculptures in this book; the results will be worth every penny.

Free Extras

This is the rest of the stuff I promised to talk about before. At the back of the book, the WAY Cool authors provide excellent clip art for each sculpture. This means that you can easily publicize your new sculptures on brochures or flyers, add it to a signature line in e-mail, or include them on your sculpture selection menus. This is incredibly helpful for a working twister, because words rarely convey the look of a sculpture. They printed a 10" ruler on the overflap, so you can check the bubbles you make without digging around for a measuring stick. The book lays flat, thanks to the spiral binding which doesn't get clogged when you turn the pages. I'd have to say that they thought of everything in this book, and my only question is why didn't other publishers do this sooner?

If You Want To Be Totally Amazing, Buy This Book

My very first balloon book showed me how to make the basic balloon animals that every twister starts with. It took several books, ... to discover that balloon sculptors were doing incredible things with balloons. Totally WAY Cool Balloons is part of the mind boggling balloon world where people, reindeer, chickens, aliens, and coyotes appear like magic from balloons. I wish that when I started, I had this book - I would be much farther along the road to amazing balloon creations if I had. I recommend this book completely - without reservation - for anyone who wants to make fun, exciting, amazing creations from balloons. You won't learn to make a balloon dog from this book, but after these sculptures, you won't want to!

Details: 138 pages of the best sculptures around; 10" ruler printed on the overleaf; clip art of each sculpture the buyer can use on promotional materials; a full size - 8 1/2 X 11"; spacious spiral binding; high quality paper, and high quality softcover. This book looks great, whether open, closed, on a table, or on a shelf.

Jack Luzkow's Armageddon International University engaging novel tells the story of Phineas Finkel, an impersonator of Napoleon and inheritor of the legendary figure's legacy of courage, resolution, and ultimate failure. Always battling on the fringe of college life, organizing a union of staff members to defend unwanted rights an leading a revolution he can't understand, Phineas is at the center of a ludicrous [needs help] vortex that sucks in the reader's avid interest as well. A witty, humorous, and most entertaining story, Armageddon International University is an original, highly recommended novel.

This book is a steal! I was trying to prepare a meal for the relative of my girlfriend - they are all stiff snobbish people from a noble italian family. I was at a loss, and I hit on this book suggested to me by the chef of the restaurant "Al Curvone" in Bologna, Italy. SInce the first meal I cooked, every dinner comes straight from this cookbook, and I managed to impress them so much they are asking me - born in New Jersey! - for advice on how to cook Italian. This book is also an exceptional conversation starter, full of marvellous pictures, will teach you much more than recipees, it's a trip inside Italian culinary culture. After reading the book, you will book your next holiday in Parma.

This volume is the English translation of the guide put out by the Touring Club Italiano, so it's designed for Italians who want to explore the historic city of Parma and its province. If that's your destination and you really want to know where to go, then this is the book for you. You'll find everything you need to know about Parma itself as well as the castles, churches and ducal palaces out in the province. Parma is off the beaten tourist track but full of history, art, music, and, of course, great food, and this guides provides the background and details you need to get the most out of your trip. It's compact and contains many maps and itineraries, especially valuable if you are touring by car.

This book brings to life many of the peasant delicasies that my grandmother used to make.

Published recipes for different varieties of Torta and even Anolini en Brodo! Who knew? There are even gems that I was not familiar with like Braised Fennel (delicious).

The anecdotes were alo very enjoyable to me having grown up in the Bronx near Conti's Bakery mentioned in the Forward.

An excellent reference.

Having lived in Italy for 8 years myself, I learned to fully appreciate the foods of Emilia-Romagna, the region in which Parma sits. This book spolights the foods of Parma, famous for it's Parmigiano and Prosciutto di Parma. The book is well layed out, the recipes simple to prepare, and the food photos particularly inspiring. As the host of my own culinary website Italian Food Forever, I am always interested in learning more about regional Italian cuisine, and found this book pasrticularly enjoyable.

Authentic Italian cooking is regional. This cookbook gives you a chance to "taste" Parma. The food of Parma, as presented in this cookbook, is rich and diverse. The recipes are generally easy to follow and use ingredients easily obtained by the USA cook.

I did find lapses in several recipes where a certain step or procedure was assumed (or was it unintentionally omitted?). The recipes I have done have been successful and flavorful.

I love cookbooks that give you more than just recipes: they teach you about cooking, culture, and people. While this is not as good as some of the best regional cookbooks, it is certainly does teach about the cuisine and culture of Parma (and a bit about the USA where the author lives). It is a worthy addition to the regional cookbook genre.

This cookbook has many unique meals of northern Italy nicely written with recollections of "la familigia" and traditional italian meals. The dishes take some extra care and time, but isn't great italian food worth that?

I had an instant flash of recognition when I picked up this book -- these were truly the recipes that I watched my grandmother and aunts make when I was a child . Someone wanted anulin in brodo? It was whipped up in an afternoon. Polenta was a staple, as was risotto, cotechino a treat, torta di patate a favorite snack food (something my children love as well, as I worked by trial and error to recreate it), pegai the food of the gods. I had despaired of ever getting my mother to show me how to make these things and feared many of them would die off with her -- then voila, Richard Sidoli's book with everything in it! These recipes are not necessarily fast or simple to prepare (of course some are, particularly the vegetables), but so marvelously full of flavor and authentic. The list of ingredients is rarely long, but freshness is essential. These dishes bear little resemblance to what most Americans view as Italian food, even northern Italian food, but they reflect an extraodinary elevation of the simple into the sublime.

For readers of Napoleonic history, and those who want to get the 'feel' of the moment when Napoleon was fighting his last battle (Waterloo), one cannot think of a better source than Stendhal's "The Charterhouse of Parma". The book is as captivating as "The Red and the Black", and in both stories the most unforgettable characters are the older women in love with the main protogonists.

I have a soft spot for Lowell Bair's translation (in Bantam Classics), but Mauldon's is about as good, maybe better. She catches Stendhal's insouciance and tempo wonderfully, and is more careful than Howard's Modern Library version. Of the old Penguin, the less said the better -- I've not seen the new Penguin, but I doubt very much it's better than Mauldon's. (Pearson's intro, like the one for the Oxford "Red & the Black" -- also a fine translation, by Catherine Slater -- is good too.)

If I were to describe the hero of "The Charterhouse of Parma" as a narcissistic, rakish young man who is always being rescued from his misadventures by his doting, clever aunt, it would sound like I was talking about a P.G. Wodehouse book. But set this story in early 19th Century northern Italy, build it on an opulent foundation of picaresque romance and political intrigue, add equal measures of comedy and tragedy, and you have Stendhal's exuberant, wonderful novel.

Stendhal portrays the towns and states of northern Italy, all of which are ruled (during the Napoleonic era) by princes and dukes of varying degrees of care and competence, as vibrant playgrounds of Shakespearean passions for the rich. It is among this aristocracy that the hero, Fabrice del Dongo, is born and raised. Selecting Napoleon as his own hero, he runs away to France to join his cavalry just in time for the Battle of Waterloo; however, his adventures end in disillusion and humiliation (things didn't go so well for Napoleon, either), and he returns to Milan where his malicious brother has gotten him into trouble with the law.

Thus Fabrice seems destined to live his life on the run. His good looks and devilish persona make him irresistible to girls and loathsome to their jealous boyfriends, one of whom, named Giletti, Fabrice is compelled to kill in self-defense. For this act, he is imprisoned in a high tower in Parma, where the Governor's daughter, Clelia Conti, who lives in a palazzo adjoining the tower, attracts his romantic interest and tries to protect him from being poisoned by his enemies.

Fabrice's aunt, Gina del Dongo, is as central a character to the novel as her nephew. She uses her legendary beauty and charm to influence men to do her favors, such as helping Fabrice break out of prison. Her partner in crime is the equally ambitious Count Mosca, who schemes his way to becoming Prime Minister and loves Gina madly. Helping her help Fabrice out of his predicaments poses a dilemma for him, however; he actually considers the young man his romantic rival. And in some perverse way, he's right.

Despite the ribald nature of the events, this is a sad novel; it is about people who mistake passion for the end rather than the means and let it destroy their lives. And yet the novel is often very funny, particularly in Stendhal's satirical comparisons between the French and the Italian mentalities. He is aware that the French reader will find the plot absurd and the characters hopelessly immoral, but the point he is making is that even though this type of behavior -- adultery, bribery, simony, murderous revenge -- exists in every country, the Italians do it with a particular flair that makes it a unique cultural phenomenon.

Having read all of the posted reviews I feel incapable to even attempt and surpass them in eloquence and analysis, especially as English is not my native language and literature is merely a way of discovering myself.
Having said that, I merely wish to deposit my humble opinion for a book which simply swept me away for its realistic description of an era full of corruption, vane ambition and senseless passion, masqueraded as pure love. Yes, I do believe that Stendhal provides us with a realistic depiction of courtizans, complex behaviours motivated by passion for glory, love, but most of all self-respect. Most of the reviewers have described the story-line and the main characters in an admirable way, despite some of them being over-critical of all or some of the heroes. It does not matter whether one likes the characters or not, what is essential is that we follow their lives, their inner thoughts and desires, their fears. Stendhal interchanges between prose and thoughts in such a way that I felt like I knew Fabrice, Gina, Count Mosca personally, like I was present, hidden in a corner, during all their (mis) adventures.
This was a period when passion was the dominant motive for all actions, when personal relationships were full of exaggeration, positive or negative. Gina loved Fabrice passionately, Fabrice sought love passionately, Mosca adored Gina passionately, Fabrice idolised Clelia passionately, even the Prince loved himself passionately. In an era (our present) when passion is so rare to be found and when most of us indulge into petty actions and thoughts in a mechanical way, the depiction of a period where everything was so full of emotions cannot but impress us. I repeat that you do not have to like the characters, nor appreciate their motives. I do not believe that Stendhal aimed at our sympathy, he simply, in a masterful way, wished us to see what happens when reason gives way to emotion, always within the unavoidable conventional constraints of that society and its ethics.
A corrupted,senseless,opulent era, too similar to our own, but for so many different reasons. I highly recommend this book, because it took me to a world where a man's life could be devoted to one thing only: a quest of happiness even if that meant personal torture. And as is well known, torture, is not inflicted only through physical means, eg. imprisonment, but equally through mental torment and suffering.
A great poet once wrote that we live, love, dream and die alone. Stendhal shows that we should all do this for the right reason and what is right is a personal matter. After finishing the book I discovered something, which perhaps my immaturity prevented me from seeing clearly up to then: seeking all the emotions that matter to me passionately.Stendhal is a psychologist of the highest calimbre and a great painter of human souls. For that reason alone, although there are so many more - and "meeting" the insuperable and sublime, in any conceivable way, divine Gina is one of them, this book should rank highly in everybody's reading list.

I read this novel in the original language (French) and was not suprised to realize that the literary style used by Stendhal is rather similar to that of other French authors of the period, such as Balzac. For those who have read "La Comedie humaine", I can say that the author goes somewhat deeper into portraying the psychological nature of his caracters while the action line is not as complex as that in a typical novel of Balzac. The book is good; not only does it introduce the reader to the society and life of early 19th century Italy and France, but also provide an easy-to-comprehend example of French Romanticism. At times the reader encounters a number of sytlistic inconsistencies (the author spent only 7 weeks to write the entire book), yet overall the prose is elegant and straightforward. For those readers who are fonder of postmodern literature, "The Charterhouse of Parma" is perhaps not as interesting. To put it in one sentence, the book is classic, but that does not necessarily make it very inovative!

Not difficult to read, provides a look at many aspects of life in the Colonies and Iberia. Useful (especially for those who don't speak Spanish) references and maps in the back. I didn't give it five stars, however, because I think it was a bit choppy in the writing, jumping from place to place. I also think--even though I could be totally off the wall on this one--that the authors tried too hard to hide their bias for one of the women. I'm not much of a social historian, I'm much more of a structuralist, so I do recognize my own bias while reading this.

Two worlds collide from across the Atlantic Ocean when a well-respected man is charged with the dishonorable crime of bigamy. The defendant, Francisco Noguerol de Ullua, is a true man of his time striving from humble beginnings to shake off the weight of his birth and claim glory in the Americas. His crime is the consequence of unfortunate circumstances of miscommunication, strained familiar relationships, and the resurrection of a dead wife. The Cooks chronicle these true events providing a peek into 16th century Spanish life and culture in the New World with commentary that is helpful and revealing. This book is crafted in a light that truly makes the events of 400 years ago come to life-an excellent choice for students of Latin American history, legal history, or social history. Maps, glossary, and a chronicle of events included.

This is an excellent, wonderful snapshot of the crazy, life-and-death world of Italian soccer.

You don't have to love soccer and you don't even have to love sports to love this book. It has drama, personality, grit, emotion, and, above all, a ring of joy throughout it. Some books you read to learn; others you read for joy. This is the rare work that lets you do both, page after page.

I was walking through a northern Italian village one evening when Italy was playing a selection game for the last Coppa. "Where is everyone?" my wife asked me. Suddenly the entire countryside exploded in a joyous roar. Italy had just scored.

In seconds, the street was full of kids and parents laughing, hugging and jumping on their motorini to hook horns.

It was a moment of magic, and the good Mr. Burke manages to catch much of that spirito in these pages.

Viva La Roma!

As an ex-patriot living in Italy I couldn't help but catch the soccer bug. It is the national religion and Mr. Burke's book uncovers the reality in the cult. Following a well known Italian team backed by a notoriously famous "Mister" the book penetrates to the roots of the most prestigious soccer league in the world. It is a great read for veteran soccer enthusiasts or for the young aspiring fan.

C.K. Scott-Moncrieff's disastrous translations of Stendhal are still available in Everyman's Library and you should avoid them like the plague. What Moncrieff did to Proust was bad enough, but his Stendhal was even worse. Stendhal should read like dry champagne in a crystal flute, but Montcrief turns him into cheap cough syrup. This Edwardian queen made all his defenseless authors read like him. The translators of choice here are Raffel for Red & Black and Howard for Parma. Consign Moncrieff to the dustbin of translators!

Wow - definitely a minority here since everyone else totally dug the book. Puzzling. I love historical fiction, especially about England or Italy. The description on the back was mouthwatering.

It's certainly not the antiquated narrative tone - Oliver Twist, The Fifth Queen, Barnaby Rudge, Wives and Daughters (excellent!!), Dracula...no problem with any of them.

I didn't finish the book - think it was around page 70 or so I decided to drop it. Couldn't tell you why. Just found it tedious and uninteresting. LOTS of description and long solid paragraphs maybe?

This is really one of those classic European novels from the early 19th century. It's written in a true romantic format: lengthy at times and not a whole lot of actions in today's standards but it's clean, enjoyable, naive and easy to follow. There's also a lot to learn about European culture that time. The translation is superb too; the language is very modern but it doesn't take the cultural/historical message away.

The Charterhouse of Parma is an unforgettable mess, half operatic melodrama, half micro-analysis of Europe's petty absolutist courts on the eve of democracy. In Fabrizio del Dongo, Stendhal hits every Romantic cliche with gusto: by turns passionate, melancholic, amorous, indifferent, spiritual and carnal, he ultimately struck me as no one at all, a cipher Stendhal uses to expose the pettiness of the venal world that succeeded Napoleon's defeat. With Conte Mosca, brilliant Prime Minister to the fearful Prince of Parma, Stendhal poured his own long experience of diplomacy and court politics into a sympathetic portrait of an admirable man condemned by circumstance to a life of toadying and intrigue at a tiny provincial court. The real hero of the book for me though was its heroine, the Duchessa de Sanseverina, who has to be one of the most unforgettable female characters in European literature. Part Machiavelli, part Lana Turner, the Duchessa blends romance and Realpolitik with a verve that makes the silly plot twists almost worthwhile.

There's a part of me that wonders if the special brilliance of this novel, which has the feel of a B-movie or potboiler, was in Stendhal's ability to turn his disregard for the plot into an expression of his disdain for a Europe devoid of Napoleon, crippled by reaction and venality and head-in-the-sand consumption that feels a lot like now. The story reads like a bad opera because that's how Europe looked to Stendhal c. 1839--he knows the class he's writing about is about to disappear; their intrigues don't matter much any more; the old noble families are dying out and the new world belongs to the new wealth of a middle class he didn't especially love or understand. What seems to matter most to Stendhal is passion, a quality hard to come by in a world where there's no longer much to be passionate about. It's a strange combination of romantic longing and hard-headed cynicism that for all the improbable bumps, seemed especially right for these times.

This challenged me, and I've read my share of 19c novels. I read for hours straight, and barely budged its bulk. But I persevered, and if the titular Carthusian monastery is only in the last three paragraphs even mentioned, this is indicative of the slapdash, reader or convention to hell with it style in which this rather angry, tense, and rumbustious novel survives. If you can call a finished novel this rackety assemblage of swashbuckling bits interlarded into endless dramatic monologues of the Duchess, mainly, and her seeming nephew Fabrizio and the warden's daughter for whom he moons, Clelia. Not to mention the Count, who outlasts changes of lovers and regimes. They are all human, I suppose, taking into account a far more leisurely-paced version of their complicated lives, outside of the sabre-rattling, shown in novels 175 years ago. Harder for us to recognize people like ourselves--as they're scheming and plotting madly to turn this a proto-telenovela or higher class soap opera of the rich and famous, Northern Italian vintage.

It's as if Stendhal, writing this in mere months, driven by his publisher to compress it--as noted by Howard in his epigrammatic and idiosyncratic afterword--into two "volumes"-- wrote out whatever was in his head onto the page, stylistic felicity or cohesive plot or likable characters be damned. Convoluted, carefully qualified, often periodically structured sentences force you to slow down, and this novel, after its first hundred-odd pages, rarely moves quickly.

The story's "caterpillar" rhythms (Howard again) give this a staccato kind of edginess in parts, and plenty of Jamesean languour in many other sections. Not a novel to be casually read. Uneven, maddening, at times sleep-inducing. Oddly contemporary in the restlessness of the author with his tale, and the artificiality that pervades a supposedly realistic and detailed account of the inner and outer lives of a few highborn (or those aspiring to climb into these ranks) and profligate folks. I felt as if Stendhal used the excuse of an omniscient and editorializing narrator to talk to us about whatever was on his mind--near his death, unfortunately. He frequently adds smug asides about French vs. Italian mores and morals, and if these ring faintly amusing still today, I can imagine what entertainment they were within the Parisian salons of 1839.

This tale's more of a way for Stendhal to compare Paris with Italy, than with giving us as readers consistently engrossing characters, dramatic scenes, or gripping complications. True, all these are here in fits and starts: Marietta's greedy mother, Ferrante the mad poet in his Quixote-like passion for the Duchess, the mineralogically-concerned new Prince of Parma and his shrewish mother, the too-brief vignette of the tiny Bettina the chambermaid, the jailer's wife early on in Fabrizio's travels, and of course the fascinating set-piece of him wandering in and out of the edge of the battle of Waterloo, but missing a glimpse of Napoleon!

Frustrating in its ebb and flow, rawer than the polished prose passages may at first let on, and rewarding if you've already been through other 18/19c fiction, this novel-of-sorts is handsomely bound, with a few drawings inside and a lovely watercolor of Waterloo which may lead you, as it did me, to expect a much more action-filled story. The duels and prison escapes and court intrigue is all here, and a distant and disapproving look at clerical hypocrisy throughout jostles against an undertone of social conscience amidst the behind the scenes, off-stage bedhopping and double-crossing that at times balances a concentration upon the more rarified circles of society. For all the ludicrous moping of doe-eyed Clelia and far worse the undeserving and two-faced "prelate" Fabrizio, Stendhal's underlying, if rather too muted, criticism of their casuistry does keep you reading, since it's too far by then into the accruing for you to surrender your temporal investment! It certainly shows a Church mired in as much scandal and immorality as it has been charged with before and since. Stendhal does carry on the spirit of 1789 here.

False passports, illegitimate sons, crooked lawyers, corrupt politicians, threats of terror, restive peasants: all the stuff of so many tales from this time emerges here, but from a thicker, more lumpish, but still intriguingly half-baked mess that makes up this clunky but, for all its lopsidedness, a rather endearing, if harshly critical as much as soppily muddle-headedly romantic, depiction of a very unsettled time not unlike all the decades of Europe since then. This novel shows a continent already jittery about liberalism, secularism, and revolt, and this two/three generations before modernism and WW1.

Buried deep within one if its dense chapters towards the concluding, if rushed, episodes is Stendhal's observation that politics fits rarely into a novel; but like a gunshot at a concert, it's hard to ignore once it happens! The Abbe Blanes, a lovable eccentric, early on warns Fabrizio that 50 years must pass before the sleep of reason (not his words; I borrow Goya) lifts from a Europe under the thumb of despots and/or clerics. His prediction, by the later 19c in Italy, finally was proven. In this way, obliquely, those like the protagonists of this novel who favored Napoleon did, in a tangential manner, get their and their author's dreams fulfilled of a somewhat more open-minded Europe.