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Italy: Tuscany

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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.

Item EXITL709. Buy these 4 items as a set for $78 including shipping, 15% off the retail price.
With free shipping on anything else you order.

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War in Val D'Orcia: An Italian War Diary, 1943-1944

by Iris Origo | Denis Mack Smith

• BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
• 1995
• PAPER
• 239 PAGES

A diary of day-to-day heroism and fortitude. The author and her family take children, deserters, escaped prisoners, and Jews fleeing the advancing Germans into their home in Tuscany. (ITL219, $14.95)

Eyewitness Guide Florence & Tuscany

by Eyewitness Guides

• GUIDEBOOK
• 2011
• PAPER
• 336 PAGES

Superbly illustrated, this compact guide shows the neighborhoods, museums, shops and sites of Florence and surroundings in full color. (ITL46, $25.00)

Tuscan Country, A Photographer's Journey

by Wes Walker

• CULTURAL PORTRAIT
• 2007
• HARD COVER
• 160 PAGES

Walker captures the allure of the hill towns, including Siena, Lucca, Pisa and smaller cities and villages in 100 luminous color photographs. (ITL848, $29.95)

Tuscany Map

by Touring Club Italiano

• 2011
• MAP

A detailed map at a scale of 1:200,000. Imported from Italy. (ITL102, $14.95)

 

Also Recommended

Fodor's Florence's 25 Best

by Fodor's

• GUIDEBOOK
• 2011
• PAPER
• 128 PAGES

This shirt-pocket guide includes an excellent map and essential information on the city's highlights, including sightseeing, restaurants and shopping. (ITL140, $11.99)

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)

A Culinary Traveller in Tuscany

by Beth Elon

• FOOD
• 2009
• PAPER
• 320 PAGES

A resident in Tuscany for 30 years, Elon presents 100 recipes from a hand-picked selection of favorite restaurants in this charming cookbook and travel guide. With 10 itineraries highlighting largely undiscovered regions of Tuscany, restaurants, trattorie, shops, wineries, olive oil producers, markets and food festivals. (ITL729, $17.95)

A Traveller's Wine Guide to Italy

by Stephen Hobley

• FOOD
• 2001
• PAPER
• 144 PAGES

A slim but very informative, lavishly illustrated guide to the wines of Italy. It's a vineyard-by-vineyard guide, organized by region. (ITL879, $19.95)

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)

Piano, Piano, Pieno

by Susan Mckenna Grant

• FOOD
• 2008
• HARD COVER
• 448 PAGES

The title, "slowly, slowly, full" in Italian, sums up the cooking style advocated by Grant, an organic farmer in Tuscany, who brings together 200 authentic recipes in this lovingly-produced cookbook. (ITL975, $40.00)

The Finest Wines of Tuscany and Central Italy

by Hugh Johnson | Nicholas Belfrage

• FOOD
• 2009
• FLEXI-BOUND
• 320 PAGES

This astute guide to wine-making regions and villages in Tuscany includes a history of Tuscan grapes and culture, excellent color maps and profiles of select vintners and wines. (ITA72, $34.95)

The Food of Italy

by Waverly Root

• FOOD
• 1992
• PAPER
• 750 PAGES

Evocative of Italy and its diverse cuisine, this classic book, organized geographically, offers a cook's tour of the country. It's a well-informed and wonderful culinary guide. (ITL75, $22.00)

Italianissimo

by Louise Fili | Lise Apatoff

• CULTURAL PORTRAIT
• 2008
• HARD COVER
• 111 PAGES

Divertingly illustrated, this A-to-Z guide profiles 50 very Italian customs and concepts from the notion of beauty (bellisimo) to the Italian disregard for lines (Fare La Coda). (ITL983, $19.95)

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)

The Etruscans

by Graeme Barker | Tom Rasmussen

• HISTORY
• 2000
• PAPER
• 379 PAGES

This illustrated history incorporates the most recent archaeological evidence, bringing to life Etruscan culture, economics and innovations, and the artistic achievements and artifacts that continue to capture our imagination. (ITL169, $44.95)

The Most Beautiful Villages of Tuscany

by James Bentley | Hugh Palmer

• HISTORY
• 1997
• HARD COVER
• 224 PAGES

This handsome oversize picture book is a portrait of the Tuscan landscape and people. It contains maps, a travel guide and many color photographs. (ITL261, $40.00)

The Renaissance, A Short History

by Paul Johnson

• HISTORY
• 2002
• PAPER
• 196 PAGES

The history, background, literature, sculpture, paintings and architecture of the Renaissance in just over 200 lively, thought-provoking pages. (ITL774, $15.00)

Songbirds, Truffles and Wolves, An American Naturalist in Italy

by Gary Paul Nabhan

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 1994
• PAPER
• 256 PAGES

The author, a poet and naturalist, heads along the Franciscan Way from Florence to Assisi. This most unusual travelogue combines natural history, spirituality and a lively appreciation of local food and food traditions. A print-on-demand paperback. (ITL99, $16.00)

Under the Tuscan Sun

by Frances Mayes

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 1997
• PAPER
• 288 PAGES

In this best-selling memoir of buying, renovating and living in an abandoned villa in Tuscany, Mayes reveals the sensual pleasures found in rural Italy. (ITL85, $15.00)

Amazing Disgrace

by James Hamilton-Paterson

• LITERATURE
• 2006
• PAPER

Darker than Hamilton-Paterson's previous outing (Cooking With Fernet) starring Gerald Samper, this hilarious sequel skewers British pretension and the glories of expatriate life in Tuscany. (ITL806, $14.95)

Summer's Lease

by John Mortimer

• MYSTERY
• 1991
• PAPER
• 288 PAGES

A well-paced mystery set in the Tuscan countryside, by Sir John Morimer, author of Rumpole of the Bailey. Poor Molly Pargeter's idyll is upset when the water supply fails and a neighbor dies. John Gielgud starred in the Masterpiece Theatre adaptation as the seriously mischievous Haverford Downs. (ITL580, $18.00)

The Birth of Venus, A Novel

by Sarah Dunant

• LITERATURE
• 2004
• PAPER
• 397 PAGES

A rich novel of art, passion and patronage, memorably set in late 15th-century Florence and prominently featuring the famously pious reformer Savonarola. (ITL532, $15.00)

Travelers' Tales Tuscany

by Tara Austen Weaver | James O'Reilly

• ANTHOLOGY
• 2002
• PAPER
• 222 PAGES
• OUT OF PRINT

An anthology of great excerpts from travel essays about Tuscany, with pieces from Saul Bellow, Frances Mayes and Ferenc Mate, among others. (ITL315, $16.95)

Tuscany For Beginners

by Imogen Edwards-Jones

• LITERATURE
• 2005
• PAPER
• 323 PAGES

In this deliciously wicked tale, British novelist Edward-Jones skewers the pretensions of the English abroad, taking as her target the sodden proprietress of a mediocre B&B in Tuscany. (ITL609, $13.95)

Tuscany in Mind

by Alice Powers

• ANTHOLOGY
• 2005
• PAPER
• 400 PAGES

A fine literary anthology covering the region's history, geography, culture and (of course) food, featuring contributions by luminaries including D.H. Lawrence and Robert Browning. (ITL607, $14.95)

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