Italy Memoirs

In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo Buonarroti to paint the ceiling of the newly restored Sistine Chapel in Rome. During the four extraordinary years that Michelangelo spent laboring over the ceiling, power politics and personal rivalries swirled around him. He battled ill health, financial and family difficulties, inadequate knowledge of the art of fresco, and the Pope's impatience - a history that is more compelling than most novels.

Antonio Gramsci was born in Sardinia in 1891, became the leader of the Italian Communist Party in his early 30s, was arrested by Mussolini’s police in 1927, and remained imprisoned until shortly before his death 10 years later. The posthumous publication of his Prison Notebooks established him as a major thinker whose influence continues to increase. Fiori’s biography enlarges upon the facts of Gramsci’s life through personal accounts, and through Gramsci’s own writings to relatives and friends.

Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned 30, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be. To recover from all this, Gilbert took a radical step. She got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world, all alone. This is the absorbing chronicle of that year.

Not your typical travel memoir, My Love Affair With Italy is a collection of one woman’s travels spanning 45 years, intertwined with a revealing personal account of the family struggles that draw her back to Italy each time. After a harrowing first trip left her stranded in Europe at age 17, she became obsessed with returning to the home of her ancestors. Her goal was to reach a village deep in the mountains of Sicily—the birthplace she had only heard about as a child. It was there her aunt’s husband grew up in a cave that predated Christ before immigrating to the United States. If ...

When Richard Lucchesi invites his mom to join his young family on a whirlwind tour through Italy, he’s hoping for quality time and postcard memories. What he gets is a full-blown comedy of errors involving lost passports, multiple police units, pickpockets, missed trains, ancient ruins, caffeine-induced breakdowns, and one absolutely unforgettable trip across Italy from Milan to Tuscany, Napoli, Pompeii, and beyond. In this side-splitting travel memoir, Grandma Backpacks Italy chronicles the chaos and charm of three generations navigating trains, tantrums, and tiramisu. From unbelievable ...

Lured by Venice’s colorful history and its labyrinth of walkways, canals, and bridges, Barry wanted to be more than just a tourist. He convinced his wife Debbie to join him in his Venice experiment, a one-year cultural immersion. Through their initiation into Venetian society, Debbie and Barry discovered the close-knit family of its inhabitants and the oddities of living in Venice, the improbable city built upon millions of tree trunks driven into the mud sixteen centuries ago. From the exasperating bureaucracy to high tides endangering their ground-floor apartment, these expatriates get ...

A 2020 Audie Award Finalist One of AudioFile’s Best Audiobooks of 2019! Now a limited Netflix series starring Zoe Saldaña! This Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller is “a captivating story of love lost and found” (Kirkus Reviews) set in the lush Sicilian...

The complete history of the legendary Venice landmark where Hemingway, Welles, and others were regulars. A meeting place for writers, artists, models, and the stars of stage, screen, and corporate boardrooms, a luxurious restaurant whose fabulous concoctions and timeless decor have often been imitated but never matched, Harry’s Bar in Venice has remained one of the world’s most renowned watering holes for more than 60 years.

From the author of the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning #1 New York Times bestseller All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land, a "dazzling" (Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran) memoir about art and adventures in Rome. Anthony Doerr has received many awards—from the New...

Against the background of an age that saw the rebirth of ancient and classical learning, Paul Strathern explores the intensely dramatic rise and fall of the Medici family in Florence as well as the Italian Renaissance, which they did so much to sponsor and encourage. Interwoven into the narrative are the lives of many of the great Renaissance artists with whom the Medici had dealings, including Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Donatello as well as scientists like Galileo and Pico della Mirandola.

The Borgia family have become a byword for evil. Corruption, incest, ruthless megalomania, avarice, and vicious cruelty - all have been associated with their name. And yet, paradoxically, this family lived when the Renaissance was coming into its full flowering in Italy. Examples of infamy flourished alongside some of the finest art produced in western history.

Naples '44 is an unflinching autobiographical account of a year in Naples after the armistice and Allied landings in Sorrento in 1943. Working as a British counterintelligence officer under the Allied occupation, Lewis documents the rich pageant of life in the city and its surrounding areas. There is suffering and squalor: Criminal gangs are on the rise, along with typhus and black market commerce, and the female population is forced into part-time prostitution. But there is farce and humor, too, witnessed in the Roman uncle paid handsomely simply to appear at funerals.

The Brandenburgers were Hitler's Special Forces, a band of mainly foreign German nationals who used disguise and fluency in other languages to complete daring missions into enemy territory. Overshadowed by stories of their Allied equivalents, their history has largely been ignored. First published in 1984, de Giampietro's highly-personal and eloquent memoir is a vivid account of his experiences. In astonishing detail, he delves into the reality of life in the unit from everyday concerns and politics to training and involvement in Brandenburg missions.

With a new roof and working electrics in place on her villa in Italy, Rosie is ready for the next phase of turning the 22-roomed derelict Italian villa into a home. It needs to be ready in time for her elderly Irish parents to move in and her daughter to finally visit after being separated for so long.

More than 20 years ago, Frances Mayes - widely published poet, gourmet cook, and travel writer - introduced readers to a wondrous new world when she bought and restored an abandoned Tuscan villa called Bramasole. Under the Tuscan Sun inspired generations to embark on their own journeys.

Two intrepid curmudgeons. An SUV with red plates. Ten thousand miles of twisty roads. What could go wrong? Changing zip codes every day? But of course! Folding your mirrors to squeeze through narrow lanes? Sign us up. Eating unidentified animal parts? Why not? But sorting out the trash in Sardinia? You need a Ph.D. for that! Driving Italy is the irreverent memoir of our winter chasing the sun from Paris to Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily, fighting Covid, the GPS, and each other, and falling in love with Italy. If you like a good chuckle, spunky non-heroes, and the road less traveled, you'll ...

On Christmas Day, 800, Charlemagne was crowned "Emperor of the Romans" by Pope Leo III. Under his guidance the Carolingian Renaissance flourished, with his capital of Aachen becoming a center of learning and artistic genius. The legacy of Charlemagne on European history and culture is monumental. Yet, within 30 years of his death, his empire had fragmented. Who was this legendary ruler? How had he managed to rule these vast domains? And why has his legacy continued to influence Europeans to this day?

When Pliny the Elder perished at Stabiae during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, he left behind an enormous compendium of knowledge, his 37-volume Natural History, and a teenaged nephew who revered him as a father. Grieving his loss, Pliny the Younger inherited the Elder's notebooks - filled with pearls of wisdom - and his legacy. At its heart, The Shadow of Vesuvius is a literary biography of the younger man, who would grow up to become a lawyer, senator, poet, collector of villas, and chronicler of the Roman Empire.

'Not a superficial skim, but something altogether more satisfying.' - Susan Kurosawa, The Australian. Part memoir, part meditation on Italian history and culture, this account of the odyssey of two retired Aussies in the land of la dolce vita is sure to delight anyone with even the remotest interest in Italy and the Italians. Structured as a series of essays, chapters cover such diverse subjects as the Italian obsession with food, Napoleon's encounter with the islanders of Elba, opera and Shakespeare, the art of the Renaissance, why Italian piazzas work so well, and lots more. In 2017, the ...

Hailed in Italy as the best book ever written about the mafia in any language, Cosa Nostra is a fascinating, violent, and darkly comic account that takes us deep into the inner sanctum of this secret society. John Dickie uses startling new research to reveal the inner workings of this secret society with a murderous record. He explains how the mafia began, how it responds to threats and challenges, and introduces us to the real-life characters that inspired the American imagination for generations, making the mafia an international, larger than life cultural phenomenon.