COUNTRY WALKERS

Italy: Venice

READING AND TRAVEL GUIDE

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Enrich your travels with reading! Here's a hand-picked list prepared for your journey in conjunction with the book experts at Longitude.

Essential Reading

Item EXITL159. Buy these 4 items as a set for $82 including shipping, 15% off the retail price.
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Eyewitness Guide Venice & the Veneto

by Eyewitness Guides

GUIDEBOOK
2012
PAPER
312 PAGES
COMING IN FEBRUARY

Featuring color photography, dozens of excellent maps and a synopsis of the region's attractions. (ITL200, $20.00)

The World of Venice

by Jan Morris

TRAVEL NARRATIVE
1995
PAPER
315 PAGES
FAVORITE

Morris displays her talent for research, anecdote and well-wrought prose in this spirited history of a beloved city. (ITL12, $18.95)

Art and Life in Renaissance Venice

by Patricia Brown

ART & ARCHITECTURE
2005
PAPER
176 PAGES

This compact volume evokes the spirit of Renaissance Venice with authoritative essays and 120 full-color illustrations. (ITL57, $40.80)

Venice Map

by Borch Maps

2008
MAP

A colorful, detailed city map of Venice, perfect for finding your way around the famously labyrinthine streets and canals. (ITL26, $8.95)

Also Recommended

Veneto Friuli Venezia Giulia Map

by Touring Club Italiano

2008
MAP

A detailed, shaded relief map of the Veneto at a scale of 1:200,000. Accurate, colorful, and imported from Italy. (ITL22, $12.95)

Blue Guide Venice

by Alta Macadam

GUIDEBOOK
2007
PAPER
288 PAGES

This comprehensive guide is the best for art, architecture, museums, history and culture. (ITL457, $29.95)

Fodor's Venice's 25 Best

by Citypack

GUIDEBOOK
2012
PAPER
176 PAGES
COMING IN MARCH

This shirt-pocket guide includes an excellent map of the city center and essential information. (ITL106, $12.99)

Lonely Planet Italian Phrasebook

by Lonely Planet

LANGUAGE & PHRASEBOOKS
2011
PAPER
260 PAGES

A handy palm-size phrasebook for the traveler. (ITL531, $8.99)

Made in Italy, A Shopper's Guide

by Laura Morelli

GUIDEBOOK
2008
PAPER
208 PAGES

The second edition of Morelli's expert survey of handcrafted Italian shops and products from Murano glass to ceramics, jewelry and leather. (ITL473, $24.95)

Walking

by Henry David Thoreau

REFERENCE
1994
PAPER
92 PAGES

Slip this pocket edition of Thoreau's meditations on the spiritual benefits of this most civilized form of travel in your daypack for inspiration. (WLK04, $9.99)

Biba's Italy

by Biba Caggiano

FOOD
2006
HARD COVER
320 PAGES

Caggiano focuses on regional, seasonal food in this omnibus cookbook (featuring 100 recipes), menu planner and travel guide to Rome, Florence, Bologna, Milan and Venice. Nicely produced, this handsome sepia-toned book includes recommended restaurants, cafes and markets in each city. (ITL777, $29.95)

A Traveller's History of Venice

by Peter Menzel

HISTORY
2005
PAPER
304 PAGES

A lively, brief history of Venice. (ITL625, $14.95)

La Bella Figura, A Field Guide to the Italian Mind

by Beppe Severgnini

CULTURAL PORTRAIT
2007
PAPER
288 PAGES

Italians themselves love this guide to the Italian character, which addresses the apparently never-ending passion for beauty, disorder and high emotion. Severgnini opens the book with a snapshot of the hubbub at Malpensa Airport, then moves on to Tuscany, Rome, Naples and Sardinia. (ITL718, $14.00)

La Bella Lingua

by Dianne Hales

CULTURAL PORTRAIT
2010
PAPER
336 PAGES
NEW

Inebriated with the sounds of Italian, lovesick for its phrases and enamored of its earthy idioms, Hales, "a sensible woman of sturdy Polish stock," dives into the Italian of the piazza, literature, movies and streets in this charming memoir. (ITA26, $15.00)

Piazza San Marco

by Iain Fenlon

HISTORY
2009
HARD COVER
224 PAGES

Fenlon reveals the dynamic, colorful, and noisy history of this grand square at the heart of Venetian civic life in this sophisticated pocket guide. (ITA113, $19.95)

The City of Falling Angels

by John Berendt

HISTORY
2006
PAPER
414 PAGES

Berendt's masterful mix of damp aspirations, intrigue and eccentric personalities conveys a certain essence of what it's like to live in modern Venice. (ITL644, $16.00)

Venice Observed

by Mary McCarthy

CULTURAL PORTRAIT
1995
PAPER
158 PAGES

Originally published over 30 years ago, this collection of eight essays is a literate, evocative celebration of the city, its character, and its history. (ITL27, $13.95)

Venice, The Grand Canal

by Daniele Resini

ART & ARCHITECTURE
2005
HARD COVER

This ingenious book unfolds accordion-style to reveal a 42-foot panorama of the palaces, churches and museums fronting Venice's glorious Grand Canal. The photographer, Daniele Resini, took the photographs over a period of three years to create one perfectly continuous portrait of this architectural wonder. (ITL663, $50.00)

Italian Days

by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

TRAVEL NARRATIVE
1998
PAPER
479 PAGES
FAVORITE

Grizzuti Harrison writes with warmth and depth of her journey from Milan south to Calabria in this sprightly account of Italy and the Italians. (ITL02, $15.00)

Italian Neighbors

by Tim Parks

BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
2003
PAPER
272 PAGES

This sparkling memoir by the British novelist captures the travails and delights of life in the Italian countryside. Montecchio, which Parks so indelibly sketches in this favorite book, is outside Verona. (ITL16, $14.95)

Venice Is a Fish

by Tiziano Scarpa

TRAVEL NARRATIVE
2009
PAPER
160 PAGES

The hugely popular Venetian novelist, poet and playwright makes his English-language debut with these marvelously digressive essays on the many moods and pleasures of La Serenissima. (ITL964, $12.00)

Dead Lagoon, An Aurelio Zen Mystery

by Michael Dibdin

MYSTERY
1995
PAPER
297 PAGES

Dibdin -- a master of ambiguous settings, shady dealings and fast-paced prose -- returns to Venice in this sixth book in the thoroughly enjoyable Aurelio Zen series. (ITL577, $14.95)

Death at La Fenice

by Donna Leon

MYSTERY
2004
PAPER
270 PAGES

The first of the tremendously good Guido Brunetti mysteries, all set in the author's beloved Venice, in which a famous conductor is found dead at the celebrated theater of the title. (ITL555, $13.99)

Birds of Europe

by Lars Svensson

FIELD GUIDE
2010
PAPER
416 PAGES
FAVORITE

Featuring 3,500 glorious paintings by Killian Mullarney and Dan Zetterstrom, the second revised edition of this exquisite guide has been brought up to date with revised text and maps. (FG47, $29.95)

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