Europe Italy

Beginning with the often violent circumstances of Dante's life, the book examines his successive works as testimony to the course of his passionate humanity: his lyric poetry through to the Vita nova as the great work of his first period; the Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia and the poems of his early years in exile; and the Monarchia and the Commedia as the product of his maturity.

What do you really know about Vatican City? The Vatican, comprising the Apostolic Palace, St. Peter’s Basilica, and various other buildings, serves as the headquarters of the Catholic Church. It has done so for nearly two millennium--ever since the first Pope, St. Peter, made it his home. Thousands of Catholics flock to the Vatican and its iconic basilica each year. But what do you really know about this great basilica and the city that houses it?

With travel tips and culture in our guidebooks written by a local, it is never too late to visit Venice. Greater Than a Tourist—Venice, Italy, by author Rachel McBride, offers first-hand and personal insight into the best ways to visit the famous city on water. Most travel books tell you how to travel like a tourist. Although there is nothing wrong with that, as part of the Greater Than a Tourist series, this book will give you candid travel tips from someone who has lived at your next travel destination.

A vengeful female ringleader heads an expensive show horse kidnapping operation, selling to the black market. One couple loses a much treasured dressage mount. Will Cajun Magic make it back to his rightful owners? Can the Mob push back against the villain's dark ways?

Il 9 febbraio 1944 il "Corriere della Sera" diede la notizia dell'arresto di Indro Montanelli, accusato di avere scritto articoli diffamanti sul regime fascista, che in quel momento si trovava sul punto di raggiungere il gruppo partigiano guidato da Filippo Beltrami. Incarcerato insieme alla moglie Maggie a San Vittore, a Milano, il 14 agosto riuscì a fuggire in Svizzera.

Members of the cosmopolitan, cultural aristocracy of Florence at the beginning of the 20th century, the Rosselli family, led by their fierce matriarch, Amelia, were vocal antifascists. As populist right-wing nationalism swept across Europe after World War I and Italy's prime minister, Benito Mussolini, began consolidating his power, Amelia's sons, Carlo and Nello, led the opposition, taking a public stand against Il Duce that few others in their elite class dared risk.

From a political and military point of view, the Partisan Diary provides firsthand knowledge of how the partisans in Piedmont fought, what obstacles they encountered, and who joined the struggle against the Nazis and the Fascists. The mountainous terrain and long winters of the Alpine regions (the site of many of their battles) and the ever-present threat of reprisals by German occupiers and their fascist partners exacerbated problems of organization among the various partisan groups.

Traveling across Route 66 as a child became a formative background for the author. After going into the ministry, he longed to have a direct experience with the land of Scripture like he had with America. Between 1989 and 2011 he and his wife led five spiritual pilgrimages to the Asian and European continents. This book is for all those who have traveled to biblical sites, who are planning to travel, or wish they could. It seeks to bring the Bible alive so others can either imagine or remember seeing the locations, hearing the sounds, and smelling the fragrances of those far away places.

It is hard to find an island on the map more central than Sicily. Located at the crossroads between Europe and Africa, and between the eastern and western Mediterranean, Sicily has rarely been governed as an independent, unified state. Nonetheless, the island has been the seat of some of the most important events in history, and nowhere is this more obvious than during antiquity.

Nel 1985 prende il potere in Urss un gruppo riformatore dalla volontà chiara ma dalle idee confuse. La prima è figlia della consapevolezza dell'innegabile degrado del sistema sovietico. Le seconde, generate invece dall'arretratezza e dal provincialismo culturali, sono però compensate da un alto profilo morale, simboleggiato dalla rinuncia a usare la forza. Nel 1988 la crisi si aggrava, e nei paesi in cui il sistema sovietico è frutto di imposizione si comincia a credere alle parole di diniego della forza, confermate dal ritiro dall'Afghanistan.

Anna Del Conte brought Italian cooking to Britain at a time when the nearest most of us came to pasta was a Heinz spaghetti hoop. Sharply observant, evocative, full of tastes and talk of food, hers is a delicious, poignant memoir of an unusual life and the food she loves to cook, which launched a culinary revolution.She arrived in England in 1949 when much of Britain was a culinary wasteland, married an Englishman, and stayed on.

Mussolini has rarely been taken seriously as a totalitarian dictator; Hitler and Stalin have always cast too long a shadow. But what was a negative judgement on the Duce, considered innocuous and ineffective, has begun to work to his advantage. As has occurred with many other European dictators, present-day popular memory of Mussolini is increasingly indulgent; in Italy and elsewhere he is remembered as a strong, decisive leader. Mussolini in Myth and Memory argues against this rehabilitation.

From a best-selling author with unprecedented access to Pope Francis, an investigative look at the recent financial scandals at the highest levels of the Vatican. A veritable war is waging in the church: On one side there is Pope Francis' strong message for one church of the poor and all; on the other there is the old Curia, with its endless enemies, and the old and new lobbies struggling to preserve their not-so-Christian privileges.

This valuable deal contains multiple titles in one book. The topics are the following: Florence, once a major center of Middle Ages European trade and banking, and one of the most affluent cities in the world; Naples, one of the world's oldest constantly occupied cities; St. Catherine of Siena, a Dominican laywoman, mystic, activist, and writer who impacted Italian literature and the Catholic Church significantly; the Vatican, a landlocked, independent city-state and enclave in Rome, Italy; and the Venetian Empire.

Nella documentazione degli anni Venti e trenta sullo sviluppo urbanistico di Roma l'aggettivo che ricorre con frequenza è "moderno". Negli studi specialistici, negli articoli per il grande pubblico, nelle riflessioni di architetti e urbanisti dell'epoca, la trasformazione della capitale - così come dell'Italia intera - era correlata agli sviluppi di cui la società e la vita quotidiana avrebbero conosciuto gli effetti più profondi nei decenni a venire. Ma è davvero esistita un'architettura fascista?

Napoli è uno di quei luoghi che ciascuno crede di conoscere anche se non li ha mai visti. Un immaginario spesso ideologico, fatto di stereotipi, di racconti ossificati, di un'infinita aneddotica. La città si giudica continuamente e viene continuamente giudicata. Sconta il pessimismo indulgente che non di rado gli stessi "nativi" si cuciono addosso e sconta la lontananza culturale, arcigna o paternalistica, di chi la osserva dall'esterno.

1733, John Kay brevetta in Inghilterra la spoletta volante che consente di accelerare le operazioni di tessitura e ridurre la manodopera. È a quella data che si fa risalire l'inizio della Rivoluzione industriale.

Questa, più che una storia di mafia, è la storia di un gruppo di ragazzi, cresciuti nella Sicilia degli anni Ottanta, compagni di gioco sullo stesso campetto di terra battuta, che si allontanano fino a diventare nemici. I ragazzi di Regalpetra racconta la lunga guerra di mafia che agli inizi degli anni Novanta insanguinò una parte della Sicilia. E il conflitto, che vedeva amici di un tempo gli uni contro gli altri, esplose anche nei luoghi di Leonardo Sciascia, il grande scrittore che proprio sessant'anni fa fece letteratura delle cronache del suo paese con Le parrocchie di Regalpetra.

To all outward appearances, Ivanka’s life as a middle-aged ex-pat in Tuscany seems delightful. (Middle-aged is a rather comforting, if delusive term, since few live to 102.) She lives with her charming husband in a gorgeous villa in the rolling hills outside of Florence. The views are stunning, the neighbors are delightfully quirky, and perfect pizza is a short drive away. Yet despite the beauty surrounding her, and notwithstanding the passing of time, Ivanka still struggles with grief over her father’s death. A decade of living in Italy has taught her that above everything else, it’s...

Ci sono i comunisti e gli scomunisti, i barbari padani e i democristiani, i socialisti craxiani e non craxiani, i postfascisti e i berluscones: settant'anni di costume, di scissioni, di precisazioni, di essere uguali ma diversi hanno finito per affollare il nostro paese di tribù e sottotribù politiche, ognuna con i suoi tic, le sue parole d'ordine e di contrordine, i suoi vizi privati e le sue pubbliche virtù. Filippo Ceccarelli, "curioso di professione", si inabissa nelle infinite pieghe di questa storia cominciata con il dopoguerra e forse ora finita per sempre.