Italy Books - Page 4

Retirement Without Borders: How to Retire Abroad--in Mexico, France, Italy, Spain, Costa Rica, Panama, and Other Sunny, Foreign Places (And the Secret to Making It Happen Without Stress)

Barry Golson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The Golson touch 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Thia and Barry Golson are wise in the ways of living well while being frugal. This is another in their brilliant series of necessary guides for Baby Boomers and others of like inclination as they ponder creative retirement options.
The Golsons know whereof they write, having experienced firsthand what they propose.
Fieldnotes for a quality 2nd act or 3rd act or beyond.
Thanks, Golsons, for all you do for Y***!
PFB

Editorial Review:

Barry Golson knows all about retiring abroad -- he and his wife, Thia, have lived in six different countries. Now they choose expatriate-friendly locales around the world for their low cost and their high quality of living and explain how to investigate and settle in each country with minimum hassle and maximum pleasure.

Taking you step-by-step through the process of researching, testing, and finally living abroad, the Golsons' practical how-to guide covers all the major issues, including health care, finances, real estate, taxes, and immigration. Each location is profiled by an expatriate writer who has made that country his or her home and who knows how to answer all the questions about living richly and economically in some of the world's most beautiful places.

Frommer's Italy 2008 (Frommer's Complete)

Darwin Porter, Danforth Prince

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Completely updated every year! Frommer's Italy features gorgeous color photos and maps of the most of the ancient and modern cities, classical architecture and ruins, vineyards, villages, and gorgeous countryside vistas that await you. Much more detailed and comprehensive than the major competition, this is simply the most reliable and in-depth guide you can buy.

It's personally researched and full of candid opinions. Our authors have chosen the very best places to stay, from the grand hotels of Rome and the chic resorts of Capri to charming and affordable inns and small hotels in regions like Tuscany and the Lake District. And of course, we'll make sure that you dine memorably throughout Italy, whether you're splurging on a world-class restaurant in Florence or looking for a little-known trattoria that serves all the classics.

Wherever you go, you'll rely on Frommer's for authoritative but fun-to-use coverage of all the historic, artistic, and cultural treasures. You'll get a complete shopper's guide, the latest trip-planning advice on everything from bargain airfares to rail passes, and a complete shopper's guide. Frommer's Italy even features a color fold-out map!

Italy 2009 Square Wall Calendar (Multilingual Edition)

BrownTrout Publishers Inc

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Top 10 Rome (EYEWITNESS TOP 10 TRAVEL GUIDE)

Reid Bramblett, Jeffrey Kennedy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A bargain at thrice the price 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

I've read numerous travel guides, most of which I've dragged with me throughout the duration of my trips (often times, two or three books and various website printouts and lists). These have included the Lonely Planet, Fodor's and Rough Guide books. All are decent, but tend to be long and tedious to thumb through quickly.

But when you factor in size, weight, cost, and coverage, I don't think you can beat the Top 10 series. They are ideal for a few days' stay, but might be a bit lacking if you're in a particular city for a week or more. It has been all we've needed for the basis of our Rome and Venice trip planning. The hotel recommendations are a bit outdated and bare-bones, but there's always TripAdvisor and Venere for more up-to-date and detailed info. The maps are also outstanding--they've made my StreetWise maps basically obsolete (for comparison, StreetWise maps cost almost as much as this book).

Detractors may quickly scoff at the whole idea of boiling everything down to "just a top 10", but keep in mind that there are numerous "top 10 lists" throughout the book, covering many categories. The idea here is to give tourists--especially first-timers--an overview of the major sights and to provide them a basis for which to explore further, based on specific interests. Used as such, I don't think you'll find a better travel guide.

Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

Frances Mayes

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 432 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Disappointed 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I was so looking forward to reading, "Under The Tuscan Sun". An avid traveler, I love to explore various places through books since having 3 kids doesn't allow me to travel as much as I used to. I assumed the book would be good considering it was a #1 New York Times Bestseller.

Maybe my expectations were too high. I found the book to be monotonous, laborious and rather self-indulgent. The relationships Mayes appears to have developed seem superficial at best and imagery of the old, deep south conjured in my mind as I read about her cook "Wille Bell" and her seamstress as a child in Georgia. I thought I would relate to this part of Mayes' life as I too grew up in Georgia, but, again, the absence of any emotional impact left me wanting just to finish the book and be done with it.

Aside from the rehabilitation of her home in Tuscany which was written about mostly at the beginning of the book, I found the book to have a lack of continunity and really any depth. The self-proclamed pagan describes churches and locations, but doesn't capture the romance, innocence and intrigue that will keep you flipping pages.

Mayes does appear to be a fabulous cook and I would probably like a cookbook by her. However, if you are looking for a novel with a plot to sink your teeth into, this is definitely NOT it. I much prefered "Eat, Pray and Love" and the first chapter (which I am now reading) of "Almost French" is wildly more clever and intriguing.

Editorial Review:

In this memoir of her buying, renovating, and living in an abandoned villa in Tuscany, Frances Mayes reveals the sensual pleasure she found living in rural Italy, and the generous spirit she brought with her. She revels in the sunlight and the color, the long view of her valley, the warm homey architecture, the languor of the slow paced days, the vigor of working her garden, and the intimacy of her dealings with the locals. Cooking, gardening, tiling and painting are never chores, but skills to be learned, arts to be practiced, and above all to be enjoyed. At the same time Mayes brings a literary and intellectual mind to bear on the experience, adding depth to this account of her enticing rural idyll.

Italianissimo: The Quintessential Guide to What Italians Do Best

Louise Fili, Lise Apatoff

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

What is it about Italy that inspires passion, fascination, and utter devotion? This quirky guide to the Italian way of life, with its fifty witty mini-essays on iconic Italian subjects, will answer that question as well as entertain and delight both real and armchair travelers. Topics range from expressive hand gestures to patron saints, pasta, parmesan, shoes, opera, the Vespa, the Fiat 500, gelato, gondolas, and more. History, folklore, superstitions, traditions, and customs are tossed in a delicious sauce that also includes a wealth of factual information for the sophisticated traveler:• why lines, as we know them, are nonexistent in Italy• why a string of coral beads is often seen around a baby’s wrist• what the unlucky number of Italy is (it’s not thirteen, unless seating guests at a table, when it IS thirteen–taking into account the outcome of the Last Supper)• why red underwear begins to appear in shops as the New Year approaches In addition to the lyrical and poetic, Italianissimo provides useful and indispensable information for the traveler: deciphering the quirks of the language (while English has only one word for “you,” in Italy there are three), the best place to find balsamic vinegar (in Modena, of course), the best gelato (in Sicily, where they first invented it using the snow from Mount Etna). There are also recommendations for little-known museums and destinations (the Bodoni museum, the Pinocchio park, legendary coffee bars).This is a new kind of guidebook overflowing with enlightening and hilarious miscellaneous information, filled with luscious graphics and unforgettable photographs that will decode and enrich all trips to Italy–both real and imaginary.

The Ancient Shore: Dispatches from Naples

Shirley Hazzard, Francis Steegmuller

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Born in Australia, Shirley Hazzard first moved to Naples as a young woman in the 1950s to take up a job with the United Nations. It was the beginning of a long love affair with the city. Battered by World War II, Naples would remain for decades one of the most violent and impoverished places in Italy, but in its passion, vivacity, and beauty, the city still justified the loving words written about it by Goethe, Byron, and other literary travelers over the centuries.
The Ancient Shore collects the best of Hazzard’s writings on Naples, along with a classic New Yorker essay by her late husband, Francis Steegmuller. For the pair, both insatiable readers, the Naples of Pliny, Gibbon, and Auden is constantly alive to them in the present: “The ghosts of this region are too many, and too vital, to sadden us,” Hazzard writes. “Rather, they create a company, ironic and benign, to which we ourselves may ultimately hope to belong.” With Hazzard as our guide, we encounter Henry James, Oscar Wilde, and of course Goethe, but Hazzard’s concern is primarily with the Naples of our own time—often violently unforgiving to innocent tourists, but able to transport the visitor who attends patiently to its rhythms and history. A town shadowed by both the symbol and the reality of Vesuvius can never fail to acknowledge the essential precariousness of life—nor, as the lover of Naples discovers, the human compassion, generosity, and friendship that are necessary to sustain it.
Beautifully illustrated by photographs from such masters as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Herbert List, The Ancient Shore is a lyrical letter to a lifelong love: honest and clear-eyed, yet still fervently, endlessly enchanted.

Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (Oxford Archaeological Guides)

Amanda Claridge

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The city of Rome is the largest archeological site in the world. If your idea of a good Roman holiday is uncovering the archeological mysteries of the Roman Empire, then Oxford Archeological Guides: Rome is your ideal guidebook.

For such a detailed guide, this book is remarkably readable. Of the Field of Mars (Campus Martius), Claridge writes,

It is the one part of Rome which continued to be quite densely inhabited after the C9 AD, becoming the center of the late medieval and Renaissance city, and is still densely inhabited today, an extraordinary blend of past and present even for Rome. The Stock Exchange occupies a Roman temple, the boiler-rooms of the offices of the Senate are set in the ruins of Roman thermal baths, a modern theatre nestles in the shell of a Roman theatre. Many of the streets are on the lines of ancient streets, and the walls of the buildings on either side of them are often balanced directly on top of Roman walls.

Among this Oxford guide's special features are 200 site plans, maps, diagrams, and photographs; a cultural and historical overview; a chronological overview; and a glossary of essential terms. It uses star ratings to help you plan your days and divides Rome into 12 main areas: the Roman Forum, Upper Via Sacra, Palatine Hill, Imperial Forums, Campus Martius, Capitoline Hill, Circus Flaminius to Circus Maximus, Colosseum Valley and Esquiline Hill, Caelian Hill and the Via Appia, other sites, museums, and catacombs.

Shaded sidebars add anecdotal interest, covering issues such as the Seven Hills, Jupiter's Dining Room, Tomb of Bibulus, the "Province" Reliefs, Madam Lucretia, Nero's New Palace, and Gladiatorial Shows. --Kathryn True

The Travels of Marco Polo

Marco Polo, Ronald Latham

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 31 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

You are going where? 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 9 people found this review helpful.

I believe I got what I paid for. There were much better books of great detail, but they cost much more. I would suggest saving your money until you can buy a much more comprehensive book. The reading and information provided in the book was light and was gone over very fast. I question some of the facts contained there in.

Editorial Review:

Marco Polo was the most famous traveller of his time. His voyages began in 1271 with a visit to China, after which he served the Kubilai Khan on numerous diplomatic missions. On his return to the West, he was made a prisoner of war and met Rustichello of Pisa, with whom he collaborated on this book. The accounts of his travels provide a fascinating glimpse of the different societies he encountered: their religions, customs, ceremonies and way of life; on the spices and silks of the East; on precious gems, exotic vegetation and wild beasts. He tells the story of the holy shoemaker, the wicked caliph and the three kings, among a great many others, evoking a remote and long-vanished world with colour and immediacy.

Italian Survival Guide: The Language and Culture You Need to Travel with Confidence in Italy

Elizabeth Bingham

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Italian Survival Guide is a down-to-earth, bare-bones introduction to Italian that aims to make a trip abroad as smooth and enjoyable as possible. This information-packed mini-course concentrates on preparing readers to travel in Italy in a limited time by focusing on what is most useful or interesting to travelers and cutting out unnecessary vocabulary and grammar.

This Survival Guide helps readers communicate in the Italian language and culture. It prepares travelers for what to expect and how to deal with it, what to say and when to say it. It's like three books in one--a phrase book (so you know what to say), a grammar book (so you know how to say it), and a culture book (so you understand daily social expectations)--all focused on a traveler's needs.

Learn how to greet people and introduce yourself in Italian, how to line up lodging, order food and pay properly, how to shop and ask for directions in Italian, how to drive a car or take the train in Italy, how to get help in an emergency or talk about your family or discuss the weather, and much, much more!

Get key insights into Italian social conventions: how to talk to people, how to avoid taboo subjects, how not to look like a tourist, how to tip, how to have good table manners, how to be a gracious guest, how to discourage unwanted admirers, how to overcome poor customer service, how to avoid petty crime.

Discover the fine points of city buses, grocery stores, train stations and coffee shops. Read how to achieve la bella figura--the style and classiness Italians prize. Learn gestures and geography and how to pronounce Giorgio.

Italian Survival Guide is packed with culture notes, study tips, travel hints, and reality checks galore. It includes optional exercises for practicing material from the lessons, Italian-English and English-Italian dictionaries, and inside-the-cover Survival Summaries travelers can use on the spot. In addition, Italian pronunciations are written throughout the book, so users always have guidance on how to pronounce new words and phrases. Includes an extensive index to help readers find the topics they want, fast. All this packed into one volume small enough to tuck into a bag and take along.