SOUTHERN EUROPE
Italy   |   READING AND TRAVEL GUIDE

Here's a page from Longitude, the specialty bookseller for travelers. To order online, and to see the latest, most comprehensive selection of books and maps, go to http://reading.longitudebooks.com/B499. You may also call 800-342-2164 to order or request a catalog.


Essential Books These 5 items are available for $83, including
U.S. shipping, a 15% discount (Item no. EXITL501)		  
Eyewitness Guide Italy  •  Eyewitness Guides
GUIDEBOOK •  2011 •  FLEXI-BOUND  • 720 PAGES
Another gem in the Eyewitness series, this superb guide is handsome, convenient and up-to-date; it's the guide to carry. Featuring color photography, dozens of excellent local maps and a region-by-region synopsis of the country's attractions. (ITL32, $30.00)		   Eyewitness Guide Italy
Italian Days  •  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
TRAVEL NARRATIVE •  1998 •  PAPER  • 479 PAGES • FAVORITE
A literary celebration, portrait and guide to Italy and the Italians. Barbara Grizzuti Harrison writes with warmth and depth of her journey from Milan south to Calabria in this sprightly account. It's one of our favorite books about place. (ITL02, $15.00)		   Italian Days
La Bella Figura, A Field Guide to the Italian Mind  •  Beppe Severgnini
CULTURAL PORTRAIT •  2007 •  PAPER  • 288 PAGES
Hugely popular in Italy, this witty guide to the Italian character addresses the apparently never-ending Italian passion for beauty, disorder and high emotion. An Italian journalist, Severgnini opens with a snapshot of the hubbub at Malpensa Airport, taking the unwary reader firmly by the hand on a journey to Milan,Tuscany, Rome, Naples and Sardinia. He hilariously points out Italian rituals and quirks from the highway to hotels, bedrooms, restaurants, the office and beach. (ITL718, $14.00)		   La Bella Figura, A Field Guide to the Italian Mind
Italy in Mind  •  Alice Powers
LITERATURE •  1997 •  PAPER  • 349 PAGES
A terrific collection of some of the best literary writing on Italy, including pieces by Melville, Lawrence, Henry James, Mary McCarthy and many others. Each piece (they tend to run about 5-7 pages) is introduced thoroughly with a description of its historical, geographical, or literary context. Great reading. (ITL39, $17.95)		   Italy in Mind
Italy Map  •  Borch Maps
2011 •  MAP
A convenient laminated map of Italy at a scale of 1:800,000 with excellent topographic detail, an index, and large individual maps of Sicily and Sardinia. Two Sides. 27x39 inches. (ITL19, $11.95)		   Italy Map



Also Recommended

Blue Guide Concise Italy  •  Paul Blanchard   • GUIDEBOOK  •  The first ever guide to all of Italy by the venerable Blue Guides (which publishes individual guides to Northern, Southern, Central, Rome, Tuscany, Sicily et al), this lavishly illustrated, handy and compact guide covers key sights, museums, churches, art, dining and accommodations throughout Italy. (ITL984, $24.95)
 		  
Culture Smart! Italy  •  Charles Abbott   • GUIDEBOOK  •  A concise, no-nonsense guide to Italian customs, etiquette and culture along with helpful travel advice. (ITL877, $9.95)
 		  
Fodor's Florence's 25 Best  •  Fodor's   • GUIDEBOOK  •  This shirt-pocket guide includes an excellent map and essential information on the city's highlights, including sightseeing, restaurants and shopping. (ITL140, $11.99)
 		  
Fodor's Rome's 25 Best  •  Fodor's   • GUIDEBOOK  •  This shirt-pocket guide includes a map of the city and essential information on its highlights. (ITL112, $11.99)
 		  
Fodor's Venice's 25 Best  •  Citypack   • GUIDEBOOK • 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  •  Lonely Planet   • LANGUAGE & PHRASEBOOKS  •  A handy palm-size phrasebook for the traveler. (ITL531, $8.99)
 		  
Made in Italy, A Shopper's Guide  •  Laura Morelli   • GUIDEBOOK  •  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)
 		  
One-Hundred & One Beautiful Small Towns in Italy  •  Paolo Lazzarin   • GUIDEBOOK  •  Each charming town gets an appreciative essay and evocative color photographs in this handsome tribute and excellent guide. (ITL546, $45.00)
 		  
Where to Go When: Italy  •  DK Publishing   • GUIDEBOOK  •  This helpful vacation planner describes the best of every region of Italy month-by-month and features beautiful full-color photographs. With a foreword by Frances Mayes. (ITA168, $40.00)
 		  
Biba's Italy  •  Biba Caggiano   • FOOD  •  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)
 		  
Italy for the Gourmet Traveler  •  Fred Plotkin   • FOOD  •  Organized geographically, this encyclopedic guide features eating establishments, cooking schools, markets, shops and other gastronomic treasures in 500 cities and villages, perfect for the food-addled who can't be in the company of the irrepressible master himself. (ITL268, $24.95)
 		  
The Food of Italy  •  Waverly Root   • FOOD  •  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)
 		  
A Traveller's History of Italy  •  Valerio Lintner   • HISTORY  •  A brief history of Italy through the 1990s -- wide-ranging, accessible and necessarily condensed. With a useful chronology and historical gazetteer, this book marches confidently through the centuries. (ITL86, $14.95)
 		  
Italianissimo  •  Louise Fili  •  Lise Apatoff   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT  •  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)
 		  
Italy, A Short History  •  Harry Hearder   • HISTORY  •  Elegantly written, generous and informative, this compact book takes in the sweep of Italian history from the Roman Republic through the Renaissance, World War II and up to the present. (ITL56, $29.00)
 		  
La Bella Lingua  •  Dianne Hales   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT • 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)
 		  
On Persephone's Island  •  Mary Taylor Simeti   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT  •  Strong on the delights of rural life, Simeti's portrait of Sicily takes the form of a yearlong journal, capturing the spirit of the people, daily life, traditions and the land. (ITL03, $14.95)
 		  
Speak the Culture Italy  •  Andrew Whittaker   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT  •  Touching on painters, writers, politicians, cultural heroes and sport stars, literature, food, wine and society, this lively all-in-one primer with a sense of humor is an engaging education in Italian culture. The series also includes Spain (SPN391), France (FRN885) and Britain (GBR936), all edited by the enterprising Andrew Whittaker, $24.95 each. (ITA111, $24.95)
 		  
The City of Florence, Historical Vistas and Personal Sightings  •  R.W.B. Lewis   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT • FAVORITE  •  A vivid tour of the city and its riches by the fine biographer of Edith Wharton and Henry James. Lewis has written what he calls "a partial biography of Florence," beautifully interweaving the personal and the historical. (ITL47, $21.99)
 		  
The Italians  •  Luigi Barzini   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT  •  The definitive portrait of the Italian people, this is a classic, scholarly essay on the Italian character. Though first published in 1964, it's still worth reading for its insight, grace and wit. (ITL05, $16.00)
 		  
The Pursuit of Italy  •  David Gilmour   • HISTORY  •  From Cicero to Dante, Giuseppe Verdi and 20th-century Italian politicians, Gilmour traces the history of Italian life and culture. (ITA273, $32.50)
 		  
The Renaissance, A Short History  •  Paul Johnson   • HISTORY  •  The history, background, literature, sculpture, paintings and architecture of the Renaissance in just over 200 lively, thought-provoking pages. (ITL774, $15.00)
 		  
Blessed and Beautiful, Picturing the Saints  •  Robert Kiely   • ART & ARCHITECTURE  •  A Yale professor, Kiely took over two decades to write this powerful and engaging meditation on the lives of the saints and the images of them painted by Renaissance artists in Italy. (ITA278, $40.00)
 		  
Italy, Monuments Past and Present  •  R.A. Staccioli   • ARCHAEOLOGY  •  This informative volume shows Italy's most important monuments as they look today and, via overlaid illustrations, as they were once upon a time. The book surveys the history and archeological highlights of Pompeii, Rome and Sicily. (ITL455, $25.00)
 		  
Pompeii, The Day a City Died  •  Robert Etienne   • ARCHAEOLOGY  •  This indispensable pocket guide illustrates daily life in the city as told by its evocative frescoes, mosaics and treasures. (ITL01, $15.95)
 		  
Rome is Love Spelled Backward, Enjoying Art and Architecture in the Eternal City  •  Judith Testa   • ART & ARCHITECTURE  •  Edith Wharton's witty, astute essays on the history and pleasures of Italy's famous villas, published in 1904, is out in a facsimile edition with the original, full-page illustrations by Maxfield Parrish. The book, a classic, covers Boboli Garden, Villa Corsini, Villa Borghese and some 80 other villas and gardens throughout Italy. (ITL81, $24.95)
 		  
D.H. Lawrence and Italy  •  D.H. Lawrence   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE  •  This omnibus Penguin Classics edition includes Lawrence's three travel tales, each very different in tone and all wonderful: Sea and Sardinia is a nostalgic look at traditional ways of life; Twilight in Italy, an evocation of Lawrence's memorable stay on Lake Garda; and Etruscan Places his musings on ancient sites, including the painted tombs of Tarquinia. (ITL62, $18.00)
 		  
Midnight in Sicily, On Art, Food, History, Travel and La Cosa Nostra  •  Peter Robb   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE • FAVORITE  •  Combining interviews, research and essays on Sicilian history and culture, this vivid report by journalist Peter Robb is a superb introduction to Italy's glorious, corrupt and troubled south. (ITL74, $18.00)
 		  
On The Road with Francis of Assisi  •  Linda Bird Francke   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE  •  Assisi wandered for 20 years, affording Newsweek editor Francke and her patient husband plenty to see and do in the piazzas, sanctuaries and chapels of Assisi, Siena, Bologna, Venice, Gubbio, Rome and other choice spots. (ITL647, $15.95)
 		  
The World of Venice  •  Jan Morris   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE • FAVORITE  •  Morris displays her talent for research, anecdote and well-wrought prose in this spirited history of a beloved city. (ITL12, $18.95)
 		  
Canti  •  Giacomo Leopardi   • LITERATURE  •  An acclaimed new translation of Italy's greatest modern poet's work. Born in the Italian Marches in 1798, Leopardi lived in Rome, Central Italy, and Naples, where he died in 1837. (ITA285, $25.00)
 		  
Death at La Fenice  •  Donna Leon   • MYSTERY  •  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)
 		  
Desiring Italy  •  Susan Cahill   • ANTHOLOGY  •  Italy as seen through the fiction, poetry and prose of stellar 19th and 20th-century women. (ITL732, $16.00)
 		  
Italy, A Traveler's Literary Companion  •  Lawrence Venuti   • ANTHOLOGY  •  Not just a literary companion, this anthology is also a who's who of contemporary Italian writers that captures the spirit, history and allure of the country. (ITL466, $14.95)
 		  
Ratking  •  Michael Dibdin   • MYSTERY  •  Venetian crime investigator Aurelio Zen goes after the kidnappers of a Perugian industrialist in this enjoyable thriller, winner of the Gold Dagger Award (and first book in the series). (ITL622, $13.95)
 		  
The Leopard  •  Giuseppe Di Lampedusa   • LITERATURE • FAVORITE  •  Evoking a lost world of privilege and tradition, Giuseppe Di Lampedusa's memorable tale, set on a rural Sicilian estate during the days of independence, follows the world-weary Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina. A classic, now in a 50th anniversary edition. (ITL11, $16.00)
 		  
The Shape of Water  •  Andrea Camilleri   • MYSTERY  •  The first of Camilleri's wildly popular Inspector Montalbano mysteries, nicely translated and shot through (pun intended) with not just memorable characters but also with Sicilian lore and politics. If you like the series, it continues in 12 more installments -- and counting. (ITL528, $14.00)
 		  
 
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