A child of Italian immigrants and scholar of Italian literature paints an intimate portrait that blends together history and the unusual to show how his 'two Italies' join and clash in unexpected ways.

A study of the economic development in twelfth-century Italy of Sicily and the maritime ports.

An effortlessly artful blend of travel book, memoir, and affectionate portrait of a people Calabria is the toe of the boot that is Italy—a rugged peninsula where grapevines and fig and olive trees cling to the mountainsides during the scorching summers while the sea crashes against the cliffs on both coasts. Calabria is also a seedbed of Italian American culture; in North America, more people of Italian heritage trace their roots to Calabria than to almost any other region in Italy. Mark Rotella's Stolen Figs is a marvelous evocation of Calabria and Calabrians, whose way of life is largely untouched by the commerce that has made Tuscany and Umbria into international tourist redoubts. A grandson of Calabrian immigrants, Rotella persuades his father to visit the region for the first time in thirty years; once there, he meets Giuseppe, a postcard photographer who becomes his guide to all things Calabrian. As they travel around the region, Giuseppe initiates Rotella—and the reader—into its secrets: how to make soppressata and 'nduja, where to find hidden chapels and grottoes, and, of course, how to steal a fig without actually committing a crime. Stolen Figs is a model travelogue—at once charming and wise, and full of the earthy and unpretentious sense of life that, now as ever, characterizes Calabria and its people.

Traces the intellectual life of Italy, where humanism began a century before it influenced the rest of Europe.

A study of the economic development in twelfth-century Italy of Sicily and the maritime ports.

From the author of Memory and the Mediterranean, a comprehensive history of the Italian city states from 1450 to 1650. In the fifteenth century, even before the city states of the Apennine Peninsula began to coalesce into what would become, several centuries later, a nation, “Italy” exerted enormous influence over all of Europe and throughout the Mediterranean. Its cultural, economic, and political dominance is utterly astonishing and unique in world history. Viewing the Italy?the many Italies?of that time through the lens of today allows us to gather a fragmented, multi-faceted, and seemingly contradictory history into a single unifying narrative that speaks to our current reality as much as it does to a specific historical period. This is what the acclaimed French historian, Fernand Braudel, achieves here. He brings to life the two extraordinary centuries that span the Renaissance, Mannerism, and the Baroque and analyzes the complex interaction between art, science, politics, and commerce during Italy’s extraordinary cultural flowering.

Italy is the top tourist destination in Europe. But while the pleasures of Tuscany, Milan, Venice, Florence, and Rome are well known and well documented, Puglia remains relatively undiscovered. Venturing in Italy collects 30 true stories that explore every aspect of this fascinating region. The book’s 19 writers, including Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Joanna Biggar, and Laurie King, find stories everywhere they look, greatly helped by Puglia's rich history: everything from Neolithic cave paintings to ancient Greek cities and temples, from houses built in caves to medieval castles and fortresses. Seen here, Puglia is vibrantly alive with unique local wines and cuisine, thermal spas in Santa Ceasaria, and mussel farming in Taranto. Maps and sketches show Puglia and the surrounding areas at their most enchanting.