Softcover. Baltimore MD, Johns Hopkins University, 1st pbk., 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 210 pages. Historian and literary scholar Christopher Celenza argues that serious interest in the intellectual life of Renaissance Italy can be reinvigorate, and the nature of the Renaissance itself re-accessed, by recovering a major part of its intellectual and cultural activity that has been largely ignored since the Renaissance was first "discovered": the vast body of works-literary, philosophical, poetic, and religious-written in Latin. Produced between the mid-fourteenth and the early sixteenth centuries by major figures such as Leonardo Bruni, Lorenzo Valla, Marsilio Ficino, and Leon Battista Alberti, as well as minor but interesting thinkers like Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger, this literature was initially overlooked by scholars of the Renaissance because they were not written in the vernacular Italian which alone was seen as was the supreme expression of a culture. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Boston, Little Brown, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Castel Di Sangro is a tiny town in the Abruzzo region of Italy, whose soccer team became an international sensation by winning promotion to the highest levels of national competition. For the team from this tiny village to be playing against the teams of Genoa and Venice was more than a dream come true, it was inconceivable. But the truth can be stranger than dreams, as Joe McGinniss discovered when he arrived in Castel Di Sangro. A recent convert to soccer, he wanted to experience life in a town turned upside down by the game. What he found was a cavalcade of euphoria, betrayal, grief, and euphoria again, an entire town living in an emotional frenzy unlike anything since the local battles of World War II. McGinniss lost himself totally to the team, a boisterous collection of characters whom readers will grow to love, and found a story whose depth and power enthralled him. Like Field of Dreams, Hoosiers, and The Secret of Santa Vittoria, this is a masterpiece of storytelling that transcends sports to embrace universal emotions. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton , 2nd Ed., 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 291 pages, b&w illustrations. Records the findings and methodology of archaeologists concerned with the civilizations of ancient Italy. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Harper and Row, 1st US, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket, 355 pages, b&w illustrations. Offers the general reader the complete history of Norman Sicily--"from the first day, in 1016, when a party of Norman pilgrims was accosted in the shrine of the Archangel Michael on Monte Gargano, to the last, a hundred and seventy-eight years later, when the brightest crown of the Mediterranean passed to one of the blackest of the German Emperors." The present volume covers the first hundred and fourteen of those years and is a history of struggles, intrigues, sieges, and insurrections, dominated by the sons and grandsons of Tancred de Hauteville and, above all, by the "gigantic blond buccaneer," Robert Guiscard, one of the most incredible men of the Middle Ages. The Other Conquest is an excellent book distinguished by its Horatian ability to delight as well as teach. Lord Norwich does not pretend to have unearthed any new material or to have put forward any startlingly original conclusions, but he has succeeded admirably in explaining "how the Normans got to Sicily in the first place, what sort of country they made of it, and how they managed to imbue it with a culture at once so beautiful and so unique." Clean copy.
Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 335 pages. In a society where trust is in short supply and democracy weak, the Mafia sells protection, a guarantee of safe conduct for parties to commercial transactions. Drawing on the confessions of eight Mafiosi, Diego Gambetta develops an elegant analysis of the economic and political role of the Sicilian Mafia. Clean copy.
Softcover. Rome, Del Turco Editore Roma, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 71 pages illustrated with 4 color plates and 61 b/w illustrations. Full account of the paintings in the Stanza della Segnatura, the Stanza of Heliodorus, the Stanza of the Incendio and the Hall of Constantine; uncredited English translation. No date, clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Fordham University Press, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 234 pages. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the half-title page. The writer Giuseppe Prezzolini said that Italian immigrants left behind tears and sweat but not "words," making their lives in America mostly in silence, their memories private and stories untold. In this innovative portrait of the Italian-American experience, these lives are no longer hidden. Ilaria Serra offers the first comprehensive study of a largely ignored legacy-the autobiographies written by immigrants. Here she looks closely at fifty-eight representative works written during the high tide of Italian migration. Scouring archives, discovering diaries, and memoirs in private houses and forgotten drawers, Serra recovers the voices of the first generation-bootblacks and poets, film directors and farmers, miners, anarchists, andseamstresses-compelled to tell their stories. Mostly unpublished, often thickly accented, these tales of ordinary men and women are explored in nuanced detail, organized to reflect how they illuminate the realities ofwork, survival, identity, and change.
Hardcover. NY, Fordham University Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 309 pages. Barolini profiles six gifted women transformed by Italy's mythic appeal. Unlike Barolini herself, they were not daughters of the great Italian diaspora. Rather, they were drawn to an idea of "Italy" and its gifts-in whose welcome a new self could be created. Or discovered. Emily Dickinson traveled to Italy only in the imaginative genius of her verse. Margaret Fuller struggled alongside her Italian lover in the political revolutions that gave birth to the Italian Republic, while the novelist and short-story writer Constance Fennimore Woolson found her home in Venice and Florence. Here, too, is the flamboyant artist Mabel Dodge Luhan, entertaining at her villa near Florence; and Marguerite Chapin of Connecticut, who married an Italian prince and in Rome founded the premier literary review of the mid-century, Botteghe Oscure. Finally, here is Iris Cutting Origo, the Anglo-American heiress who, with her Italian nobleman husband, built a Tuscan estate, where she wrote acclaimed biographies-and created a refuge from Mussolini's fascism. Clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Murdoch Books, 1st, 2024, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial cloth, 231 pages, color plates. Melbourne food people and out of towners in the know quickly formed a queue at Andreas Papadakis's tiny city eatery when word of his astonishingly good pasta got out. What could this unassuming Greek chef's secret be, they wondered - he's not even Italian! Here, at last, across 80-plus recipes, Andreas welcomes loyal fans and readers into the Tipo 00 vault and shows them how it's possible to recreate the magic at home. Covering different fresh pasta techniques, shapes and sauces, and including step-by steps, Tipo 00, the book, is a master-class for anyone who wants to revolutionize their pasta game. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. Boulder CO, Westview Press, 2nd pr., 1999, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 264 pages, color and b&w illustrations. This introduction to the life and works of one of the giants of Western painting also surveys the golden age of Venetian painting from Bellini to Veronese and its place in the history of Western art. Sometimes referred to as the founder of modern painting Titian's legacy and influence was immense and continuing?: Italian Baroque painting, El Greco, Rubens, Rembrandt and Dutch painting, French 18th century painting, Velazquez, and Picasso. There are 119 black and white illustrations integrated with the text and 8 plates in full color, a selected bibliography and index. Clean copy.
Softcover. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 315 pages. Color illustrations. For nearly four decades in the sixteenth century, the careers of Venice's three greatest painters-, Titan, Tintoretto and Veronese, overlapped, producing mutual influences and bitter rivalries that changed art history. Venice was then among Europe's richest cities, and its plentiful commissions fostered an exceptionally fertile and innovative climate. In it, the three artists, brilliant, ambitious and fiercely competitive, vied with one another for primacy, employing such new media as oil on canvas, with its unique expressive possibilities, and such new approaches as a personal and identifiable signature style. They also pioneered the use of easel painting, a newly portable format that led to unprecedented fame in their lifetimes. With more than 150 stunning examples by the three masters and their contemporaries, this volume elucidates the technical and aesthetic innovations that helped define the uniquely rich "Venetian style," as well as the social, political and economic context in which it flourished. Essays range from examinations of seminal new techniques to such crucial institutions as state commissions and the patronage system. Most of all, by concentrating on the lives and careers of Venice's three greatest painters, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese paints a vibrant human portrait--one brimming with savage rivalry, one-upmanship, humor and passion. Clean copy. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with light sticker residue, 203 pages. The travel author and historian journeys to the beguiling city of Trieste, Italy, which has enchanted her for more than fifty years, to explore issues of patriotism, decency, wildness, and sex. In this love letter to Trieste a city she has grown to love over the years and never got tired of exploring Morris looks back on her life. She recalls first coming to Trieste as a soldier [male] in World War II and discusses the impact the city's way of life has had on her own philosophy of life. Each chapter begins with a philosophical quote stating its theme and setting the atmosphere. Morris is not only skilled at vividly describing townspeople and buildings in a way that brings Trieste to life, but she also successfully balances the personal with the historical by providing references to both history and literature. Clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Thames and Hudson, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 288 pages, 34 color and 126 b&w gravure photographs by Alexander Zielcke. Dust jacket with light wear.
Hardcover. NY, Barnes & Noble, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 162 pages, color throughout. The Tuscan countryside is among the most well-loved on earth, for its beauty, its natural bounty, its magnificent light. Award-winning photographer Joel Meyerowitz and novelist/playwright Maggie Barrett have combined talents to create a loving and personal portrait of Tuscany through the seasons. Meyerowitz provides the breathtaking images; Maggie Barrett offers poetic, evocative commentary that pays loving tribute to this alluring rural world. They take you inside everyday Tuscan life and landscape, and also capture the warmth of the people who live there and their profound connection to the land. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Florence Italy, Giulio Giannini & Son, 1st, 1910, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Unpaginated, b&w line portraits of famous Italians by Buona Fortuna accompanied by verse. Originally softcover here bound in three-quarter leather and marbled boards, spine with raised bands, gilt lettering. Bound with Casa Guidi Windows by E.B. Browning.(1925, Florence, 96 pages) Front cover hinge cracked but holding.
Hardcover. New York, Aperture, 1st US, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 104 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. Published in Italian in 1955, and now available for the first time in the English language, Un Paese captures in photographs and in spoken testimony the essential experience of daily life in Luzzara. It presents a series of intense portraits, graceful landscapes, and images of everyday objects. Paul Strand's photographs are carefully distilled, deeply powerful; they contain the flavors and the rhythms of an entire culture crystallized in a single village. Zavattini successfully synthesizes text and image, aligning with the new cinematic trend of the day, a movement known as Italian neorealism. Their Luzzara is an ordinary village, neither overly picturesque nor greatly unusual, yet it is a town sustained by a grounded humanity and a profound love for the land by its people.
Softcover. NY, The Feminist Press, 1ST, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 400 pages, b&w illustrations. The memoir of a young Catholic women's affair with a pastor in Italy. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on the half-title page. A few pages with light pencil underlining., otherwise clean.
Hardcover. US, Rizzoli, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 110 pages, illustrated throughout in color. Light shelf-wear to boards, else a clean, tight copy. Valentino: Master of Couture is an exhibition at the Somerset House co-organized by Valentino himself, who selected over 130 dresses for the exhibition. The book focues as much on Valentino and his glamorous lifestyle as it does on his legendary dressmaking techniques and atelier.
Hardcover. NY, Nan A. Talese / Doubleday, 1st US, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, demi dust jacket. The history, cultural life, customs and social life of Venice. 403 pages. Chronology, Bibliography, Index. Two 8 page sections of full color illustrations, and two of black and white; b/w drawings at each chapter head. Clean copy.
Softcover. UK, Black Dog Publishing, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 68 pages, text in English and French. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers.
Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 2nd pr., 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 372 pages, color plates throughout. Dust jacket protected with a mylar covering.A comprehensive survey of the work of this most influential Florentine artist and teacher Andrea del Verrocchio (c. 1435-1488) was one of the most versatile and inventive artists of the Italian Renaissance. He created art across media, from his spectacular sculptures and paintings to his work in goldsmithing, architecture, and engineering. His expressive, confident drawings provide a key point of contact between sculpture and painting. He led a vibrant workshop where he taught young artists who later became some of the greatest painters of the period, including Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Lorenzo di Credi, and Domenico Ghirlandaio. This beautifully illustrated book presents a comprehensive survey of Verrocchio's art, spanning his entire career and featuring some fifty sculptures, paintings, and drawings, in addition to works he created with his students. Through incisive scholarly essays, in-depth catalog entries, and breathtaking illustrations, this volume draws on the latest research in art history to show why Verrocchio was one of the most innovative and influential of all Florentine artists.Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, Small white sticker on dj spine, otherwise like new. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Hardcover. New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 152 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Minor soiling to front cover of dust jacket. An otherwise clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. Color illustrations throughout. A tight copy. "A collection of exquisite large-format pen-and-ink watercolor renderings of all of Palladio's villas."
Hardcover. NY, Viking , 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 282 pages. Black & white maps, plans and illustrations. Documents the experiences of late-Renaissance Venetian nuns, many of whom were upper-class women immured against their will, exploring how convents of the period were often political hotbeds and the sites of illicit love affairs in their resident's efforts to find fulfillment. Clean copy.