Italy Books

The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy)

Rick Atkinson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 85 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the second volume of his epic trilogy about the liberation of Europe in World War II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the harrowing story of the campaigns in Sicily and Italy

 

In An Army at Dawn—winner of the Pulitzer Prize—Rick Atkinson provided a dramatic and authoritative history of the Allied triumph in North Africa. Now, in The Day of Battle, he follows the strengthening American and British armies as they invade Sicily in July 1943 and then, mile by bloody mile, fight their way north toward Rome.

The Italian campaign’s outcome was never certain; in fact, Roosevelt, Churchill, and their military advisers engaged in heated debate about whether an invasion of the so-called soft underbelly of Europe was even a good idea. But once under way, the commitment to liberate Italy from the Nazis never wavered, despite the agonizingly high price. The battles at Salerno, Anzio, and Monte Cassino were particularly difficult and lethal, yet as the months passed, the Allied forces continued to drive the Germans up the Italian peninsula. Led by Lieutenant General Mark Clark, one of the war’s most complex and controversial commanders, American officers and soldiers became increasingly determined and proficient. And with the liberation of Rome in June 1944, ultimate victory at last began to seem inevitable.

Drawing on a wide array of primary source material, written with great drama and flair, this is narrative history of the first rank. With The Day of Battle, Atkinson has once again given us the definitive account of one of history’s most compelling military campaigns.

The Prince

Niccolo Machiavelli

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 284 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Recipe of the American Corporate State 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Machiavelli's "The Prince" is a guide of morality-void techniques for acquiring and maintaining political power and ultimately, political fortune. Written nearly 500 years ago, this blueprint for tyranny is just as relevant today. As his compass, Machiavelli uses history, both ancient and contemporary. In 500 years, no one has proven him wrong. Here's a flavor for you innocents out there: "For, in truth, there is no sure way of holding other than by destroying, and whoever becomes master of a City accustomed to live in freedom and does not destroy it, may reckon on being destoyed by it". War is Machiavelli's wet dream: "A Prince, therefore, should have no care or thought but for war, and for the regulations and training it requires, and should apply himself exclusively to this as his peculiar province; for war is the sole art looked for in one who rules". Espousing the virtues of the noble lie, Machiavelli follows up with, "men are so simple, and governed so absolutely by their present needs, that he who wishes to deceive will never fail in finding willing dupes". And with this quote, I now challenge anyone to dispute the Machiavellian nature of the American Corporate State as written about in Don't Weep for Me, America: How Democracy in America Became the Prince (While We Slept). All the parallels are brought to light, always through the eyes of George Orwell. Get informed. Your city (country) is being destroyed...

Editorial Review:

The prince has long been both praised and reviled for its message of moral relativism, and political expediency. Although a large part is devoted to the mechanics of gaining and staying in power, Machiavelli's end purpose is to maintain a just and stabile government. He is not ambiguous in stating his belief that committing a small cruelty to avert a larger is not only justifiable, but required of a just ruler.
Machiavelli gives a vivid portrayal of his world in the chaos and tumult of early 16th century Florence, Italy and Europe. He uses both his contemporary political situation, and that of the classical period to illustrate his precepts of statecraft.

Meditations (Penguin Classics)

Marcus Aurelius

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 110 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Awful version of the Meditations 1 out of 5 stars.
6 of 13 people found this review helpful.

Here is what Gregory Hays, this translator, wrote:
1. MY GRANDFATHER VERSUS. Character and self-control.
This is choppy. These are sentence fragments.
Here is how Maxwell Staniforth translated the same passage in the Meditations:
1. Courtesy and serenity of temper I first learnt to know from my grandfather Versus.

Heres another verse from Hays:
2. MY FATHER (FROM MY OWN MEMORIES AND HIS REPUTATION). Integrity and manliness.
From Staniforth:
2. Manliness without ostentation I learnt from what I have heard and remember of my father.

Heaven forbid you let a young person read the sentence fragments from Hays. Fortune cookies are more eloquent than Hays.

Editorial Review:

A new translation of the philosophical journey that has inspired luminaries from Matthew Arnold to Bill Clinton

Written by an intellectual Roman emperor, the Meditations offer a wide range of spiritual reflections developed as the leader struggled to understand himself and the universe. Marcus Aurelius covers topics as diverse as the question of virtue, human rationality, the nature of the gods, and his own emotions, spanning from doubt and despair to conviction and exaltation.
* Includes an introduction, chronology, explanatory notes, general index, index of quotations, and index of names

Lidia's Italy: 140 Simple and Delicious Recipes from the Ten Places in Italy Lidia Loves Most

Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, Tanya Bastianich Manuali

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A history lesson within a cookbook 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This book is like a "mini history lesson" about SOME (not all) regions in Italy. And also, this is a cookbook about some of the interesting regional foods mentioned in each Chapter.

Lidia and her daughter Tanya took a tour of some of their favorite regions in Italy (not ALL regions,but SOME regions), for example: Piedmont, Romagna, etc...

Then, Lidia and Tanya wrote this book by describing each of the Italian regions visited, broken down into Chapters. Also, at the end of each Chapter (and there are 10 chapters) Tanya ,who has a PHD from Oxford, added her own personal take on the visits to each region, by sub-categorizing many of the "sights" worth visiting.

Along with the mini history lessons throughout this book, there are many recipes that Lidia has developed, or recipes that Lidia has discovered during her Italian travels.

I think this is a very "different" Italian cookbook, and not your average Italian cookbook seen in most bookstores. Therefore, if you collect a variety of cookbooks (not only Italian cookbooks, but multi-national cookbooks in general) then this book could be a very nice addition to your library.

Many of the recipes would be difficult to reproduce because of "difficulty" levels. To me, some of the recipes did not seem "simple" as stated in the title.

It seems to me that most of the recipes are not for an average or beginner cook. Also, since many of the recipes come from obscure towns that have their own "flavors", I would say that many of the recipes may not appeal to the average taste buds. For example, here are a few recipes that are either too difficult to reproduce by a novice, and/or recipes that would entail an acquired taste:

~~Farro with Tuna and Tomatoes, p.333
~~Anchovy Garlic Dip,p.141
~~Pasta with Anchiovi-Onion Sauce,p.108
~~Tiella filling of Octopus with Garlic and Oil, p. 250
~~Filet of Wild Boar with Prunes and Apples,p.193
~~Cooked Duck Sugo with Pasta,p.183

On the other hand, there are a few recipes that COULD be duplicated and enjoyed...(although,some of these recipes are quite "common" and are often included in most Italian cookbooks):

~~Water Soup, p. p.168
~~Asparagus and Rice, p. 11
~~Peaches with Almond Crust, p. 118-119
~~Tiramisu Limoncello,p. 120
~~Chicken Cacciatore,p.301
~~Beef Braised in Peppercorns, p. 195
~~Braised Pork Chops with Savoy Cabbage, p. 83

The last thing I should mention is that I would have loved to have seen more photos of the recipes,and especially those recipes that are very unusual.

All in all,though, I give this book 4 stars because of it's novelty and because of the interesting mini-history lessons scattered throughout.

Editorial Review:

From the Tuscan countryside to the ruins of Rome, celebrity chef Lidia Bastianich takes you on a culinary tour of the ten places in Italy most near and dear to her heart... and stomach.

City of God (Penguin Classics)

Augustine of Hippo

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Some things are better read about than read 2 out of 5 stars.
5 of 15 people found this review helpful.

I read this for a book group I was in, and was rather peeved at being forced to blow so much time on what is essentially useful only to the Classical historian or Scholasticism buff. Realistically, Augustine is just a particularly eloquent proponent of a religious argument we all get in Sunday School at age 10: The things of this world are transitory and passing, but the things of the next world are eternal and more valuable. You can almost hear the monotonous cadence. If what you want is to add to your already-considerable knowledge of the particulars of late Roman civilization, then this is the book for you. If you're in seminary and reading Aquinas, and you're thinking, "I'd certainly like to know more about his major intellectual influences," then this is the book for you. But if what you want is an increased familiarity with the major ideas of Western civilization, then do yourself a favor and go pick up a pair of textbooks: one on ancient history, the other on classical philosophy. Augustine of Hippo will get a few pages in each one, and that's honestly all he's worth. Plowing through the entirety of The City of God for simple philosophical or theological curiosity would be like reading the complete works of Louis Agassiz just to see what scientific racism was like. Both efforts would be fruitful, in one sense, but in another sense you'd have spent an awful lot of time learning about antiquated theories.

Editorial Review:

St. Augustine's masterpiece is an interpretation of history in terms of the struggle between good and evil: the City of God in conflict with the City of the Devil. Abridged for the modern reader.

Gomorrah: A Personal Journey Into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System

Roberto Saviano

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A Stilted Trip Through Unfamiliar Italy 2 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

A full-throttle look at Cammora crime from the nitty gritty ground level, "Gomorrah" is a look behind the curtain that suffers from an author with too intimate an approach to his subject. For a Neopolitan perhaps the geography, family and clan names, capos and underbosses, murders, victims and characters are a uniting thread; but, to the average American reader I think this translation of Saviano's originial Italian work lacks some critical elements that would help to make this story more than the timeline of crime it ends up being.

There is no real protagonist to unite the series of seemingly only loosely-related vignettes, unless one counts Saviano himself, but his role is more that of tour guide, standard-bearer and narrator.

Mixed in are some really interesting details about Cammora business, the purpose and organization of the system, and the lifestyle both for the connected and unconnected. But, these are sprinkled in among dizzying references to different criminal systems, families, clans and characters. Further complicating matters, the translation (I can't speak for whether it reflects the original work) is stark and breathless. In spite of the occasional turn of phrase, metaphor or analogy, the writing is spare and unadorned.

All in all, a staccato and stilted trip through what remains -- even after reading -- an unfamiliar vantage point on Italy.

Editorial Review:

A groundbreaking major bestseller in Italy, Gomorrah is Roberto Savianoa (TM)s gripping nonfiction account of the decline of Naples under the rule of the Camorra, an organized crime network with a large international reach and stakes in construction, high fashion, illicit drugs, and toxic-waste disposal.

The City of Falling Angels

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 210 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

It was seven years ago that Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil achieved a record-breaking four-year run on the New York Times bestseller list. John Berendt's inimitable brand of nonfiction brought the dark mystique of Savannah so startlingly to life for millions of people that tourism to Savannah increased by 46%. It is Berendt and only Berendt who can capture Venice--a city of masks, a city of riddles, where the narrow, meandering passageways form a giant maze, confounding all who have not grown up wandering into its depths. Venice, a city steeped in a thousand years of history, art and architecture, teeters in precarious balance between endurance and decay. Its architectural treasures crumble--foundations shift, marble ornaments fall--even as efforts to preserve them are underway.

THE CITY OF FALLING ANGELS opens on the evening of January 29, 1996, when a dramatic fire destroys the historic Fenice opera house. The loss of the Fenice, where five of Verdi's operas premiered, is a catastrophe for Venetians. Arriving in Venice three days after the fire, Berendt becomes a kind of detective--inquiring into the nature of life in this remarkable museum-city-- while gradually revealing the truth about the fire. In the course of his investigations, Berendt introduces us to a rich cast of characters: a prominent Venetian poet whose shocking 'suicide' prompts his skeptical friends to pursue a murder suspect on their own; the First Family of American expatriates who lose possession of the family palace after four generations of ownership; an organization of high-society, party-going Americans who raise money to preserve the art and architecture of Venice, while quarreling in public among themselves, questioning each other's motives and drawing startled Venetians into the fray; a contemporary Venetian surrealist painter and outrageous provocateur; the master glassblower of Venice; and numerous others--stool-pigeons, scapegoats, hustlers, sleepwalkers, believers in Martians, the Plant Man, the Rat Man, and Henry James.

Berendt tells a tale full of atmosphere and surprise as the stories build, one after the other, ultimately coming together to reveal a world as finely drawn as a still-life painting. The fire and its aftermath serve as a leitmotif that runs throughout, adding to the elements of chaos, corruption and crime, and contributing to the ever-mounting suspense of this brilliant audiobook.

Bonus feature includes an exclusive interview with the author!


From the Compact Disc edition.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 3

Edward Gibbon

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 67 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Book 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

First one thing: do not, on any account, get the abridged version. If I could take one book to a desert island, it would be this one. That's because it is extremely long, and every word of it is worth it.

Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains as relevant as ever. And this is in spite of its hugely ambitious scope, treating of the history of the Roman and Byzantine empires (both considered Roman by Gibbon) from the end of the 1st century AD to the 15th. Gibbon is a modern historian. He is shrewdly selective of his sources, judiciously reserved, and coldly analytical. He differentiates between proximate and ultimate causes. He has a humanistic but impartial point of view. At the same time, he is an 18th century Englishman. While this is reflected in some of his opinions, such as that the extinction of republican freedom was what determined Rome's decline, it makes them no less valid and often the more interesting; it is hard to imagine anyone today being able to treat the early Christian controversies with the same tact and humour, for example.

And Edward Gibbon wrote like an enchanter. I read somewhere that his style was an inspiration to Churchill. No wonder. Every line of this tome of perhaps a million words is a delight to read. You will laugh out loud. His thought is clear and convincing. And there are simply magical moments, such as when he produces that mythical animal that appeared in the Roman circus, an animal no one in Europe has seen since then... a giraffe. Or the dissertation on whether Europe remains at threat of invasion from the Mongols.

The Decline and Fall is full of telling anecdotes, and yet it always holds to a general picture. It is filled with detail and colour but never loses the reader. It is packed with events, and it offers discussion of longer trends - notably those that participated in Rome's decline and led to its eventual fall - political, religious, military, economic. And it is even more impressive when one thinks of the modern tools its author did not have at his disposal, in particular archaeological and numismatic. Approximately half of the book is dedicated to the Roman Empire proper, up to the late 5th century. This is where Gibbon is at his strongest, his research the most thorough. The rest deals with Byzantium, touching heavily on European history up to the fall of Constantinople, and has a broader sweep. His work ends with a description of Rome as it looks today (i.e. in the late 18th century).

I finished reading my copy (after several happy months) in Rome itself, in a little place with a view of the Pantheon. If you have the luck of being able to do that, you will never forget it.

Editorial Review:

Gibbon’s masterpiece, which narrates the history of the Roman Empire from the second century a.d. to its collapse in the west in the fifth century and in the east in the fifteenth century, is widely considered the greatest work of history ever written. This abridgment retains the full scope of the original, but in a compass equivalent to a long novel. Casual readers now have access to the full sweep of Gibbon’s narrative, while instructors and students have a volume that can be read in a single term. This unique edition emphasizes elements ignored in all other abridgments—in particular the role of religion in the empire and the rise of Islam.

1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance

Gavin Menzies

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Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The New York Times bestselling author of 1421 offers another stunning reappraisal of history, presenting compelling new evidence that traces the roots of the European Renaissance to Chinese exploration in the fifteenth century

The brilliance of the Renaissance laid the foundation of the modern world. Textbooks tell us that it came about as a result of a rediscovery of the ideas and ideals of classical Greece and Rome. But now bestselling historian Gavin Menzies makes the startling argument that in the year 1434, China—then the world's most technologically advanced civilization—provided the spark that set the European Renaissance ablaze. From that date onward, Europeans embraced Chinese intellectual ideas, discoveries, and inventions, all of which form the basis of western civilization today.

Florence and Venice of the early fifteenth century were hubs of world trade, attracting traders from across the globe. Based on years of research, this marvelous history argues that a Chinese fleet—official ambassadors of the emperor—arrived in Tuscany in 1434, where they were received by Pope Eugenius IV in Florence. The delegation presented the influential pope with a wealth of Chinese learning from a diverse range of fields: art, geography (including world maps that were passed on to Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan), astronomy, mathematics, printing, architecture, steel manufacturing, military weaponry, and more. This vast treasure trove of knowledge spread across Europe, igniting the legendary inventiveness of the Renaissance, including the work of such geniuses as da Vinci, Copernicus, Galileo, and more.

In 1434, Gavin Menzies combines this long-overdue historical reexamination with the excitement of an investigative adventure. He brings the reader aboard the remarkable Chinese fleet as it sails from China to Cairo and Florence, and then back across the world. Erudite and brilliantly reasoned, 1434 will change the way we see ourselves, our history, and our world.

Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America

Cullen Murphy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The rise and fall of ancient Rome has been on American minds from the beginning of our republic. Today we focus less on the Roman Republic than on the empire that took its place. Depending on who's doing the talking, the history of Rome serves as either a triumphal call to action or a dire warming of imminent collapse.

The esteemed editor and author Cullen Murphy ventures past the pundits' rhetoric to draw nuanced lessons about how America might avoid Rome's demise. Working on a canvas that extends far beyond the issue of an overstretched military, Murphy reveals a wide array of similarities between the two empires: the blinkered, insular culture of our capitals; the debilitating effect of venality in public life; the paradoxical issue of borders; and the weakening of the body politic though various forms of privatization. He persuasively argues that we most resemble Rome in the burgeoning corruption of our government and in our arrogant ignorance of the world outside -- two things that are in our power to change.

In lively, richly detailed historical stories based on the latest scholarship, the ancient world leaps to life and casts our own contemporary world in a provocative new light.