This city on the Adriatic has always tantalized Jan Morris with its moodiness and changeability. After visiting Trieste for more than half a century, she has come to see it as a touchstone for her interests and preoccupations: cities, seas, empires. It has even come to reflect her own life in its loves, disillusionments, and memories. Her meditation on the place is characteristically layered with history and sprinkled with stories of famous visitors from James Joyce to Sigmund Freud. A lyrical travelogue, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere is also superb cultural history and the culmination of a singular career-"an elegant and bittersweet farewell" (Boston Globe).

    . . . An inventive introduction to the Renaissance and one of its masters." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)"An unusual and surprisingly touching story . . . . An offbeat and intriguing read." (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, starred review)"At times sad, silly, and telling, this is a wholly entertaining book." (School Library Journal, starred review)"Filled with engaging details of Leonardo and his world. . . . Illustrations which range from utterly recognizable scenes of Florence to the ghostly horses at Leonardo's deathbed. . . . An unusual biography for young people, and one well worth poring over . . . . A unique way of picturing a unique world . . . . An extraordinary tribute." (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

    From extraordinary highs - patronage by the Medicis, friendship with Galileo and, most importantly of all, beautiful and outstandingly original paintings - to rape by her father's colleague, torture by the Inquisition, life-long struggles for acceptance by the artistic Establishment, and betrayal by the men she loved, Artemisia was a bold and brilliant woman who lived as she wanted, and paid a high price.

    Owners and designers share anecdotes about their experiences with local artisans, vendors, and bureaucracy, while offering real-world advice on the tactics of restoring a house in a foreign country. Whether the plan is to embark on a complete redesign, begin a restoration, or just move in and let the house evolve on its own, home owners and dreamers alike will value the information and thrill to the dream of Restoring a Home in Italy. This is a book at once lush and beautiful, and invaluably practical.

    The text opens with the late Byzantine work of Cimabue and concludes with the transition to Mannerism. The author’s focus is on the most important and innovative artists and their principal works, with a clear emphasis on selectivity and understanding. Italian Renaissance Art also focuses on style and iconography, and on art and artists, incorporating different methodological approaches to create a wider understanding and appreciation of the art.Distinguishing features of this text include: Over 400 illustrations, with 215 in full color, are integrated with the text, and large enough to properly view. In depth coverage on the most important and innovative artists and their principle works throughout Italy. Side boxes that provide additional material on techniques, biographical data, descriptions of artistic media, as well as necessary background information are used in every chapter. “Controversy” boxes introduce some of the ongoing scholarly quarrels among Renaissance art historians. Maps, plans, and diagrams are also included throughout. A historical chronology, a full glossary of art-historical terms, and a select bibliography are also included at the end of the text.

    Kennedy, ordered by the Jesuit General and executed by Pope Paul VI, was carried out by "the American Pope", Francis Cardinal Spellman. Spellman, being the Archbishop of New York, was "the American Military Vicar" and therefore used his most obedient soldiers - certain Knights of Malta, Shriner Freemasons, Knights of Columbus and Mafia Dons - in carrying out his orders from Rome. The single reason for the President's assassination was his interference with the purpose of the Jesuits' Fourteenth Amendment American Empire created in 1868. That purpose was to restore and maintain the worldwide Temporal (political) Power of that Jesuit Creation of 1870 - the "infallible" Pope. In resisting the Pope's Temporal Power, he threatened the monopoly of the Jesuits' Federal Reserve Bank by enacting Executive Order 11110 (4 June 1963) thereby injecting into the economy nearly five billion dollars (4.7) in interest-free "United States Notes", only to be recalled the day after his burial. The President also attempted to break the foremost international intelligence arm of the Vatican's Jesuits - the evil Central Intelligence Agency - "into a thousand pieces." In 1963 the CIA was manned by many of Hitler's old warriors - the Jesuit-controlled Nazi SS - turned "cold warriors". According to the great Frenchman, Edmond Paris, in his The Secret History of the Jesuits, it was the Jesuit Bernhardt Staempfle who wrote Hitler's Mein Kampf. This fact is further confirmed by one of the founders of the Nazi Party, Roman Catholic Otto Strasser, in his revealing book, Hitler and I. It was Roman Catholic Hitler who said of the Roman Catholic Himmler having modeled the SS after the Jesuit Order,

    At the polemical level, fascism has become a generic term applied to virtually any form of real or potential violence, while among Marxist and left-wing scholars discredited interpretations of fascism as a product of late capitalism are revived. Empty of cognitive significance, these formulas disregard the historical and philosophical roots of fascism as it arose in Italy and spread throughout Europe. In Giovanni Gentile: Philosopher of Fascism, A. James Gregor returns to those roots by examining the thought of Italian Fascism's major theorist.In Gregor's reading of Gentile, fascism was-and remains-an anti-democratic reaction to what were seen to be the domination by advanced industrial democracies of less-developed or status-deprived communities and nations languishing on the margins of the Great Powers. Sketching in the political background of late nineteenth-century Italy, industrially backward and only recently unified, Gregor shows how Gentile supplied fascism its justificatory rationale as a developmental dictatorship. Gentile's Actualism (as his philosophy came to be identified) absorbed many intellectual currents of the early twentieth century including nationalism, syndicalism, and futurism and united them in a dynamic rebellion against new perceived hegemonic impostures of imperialism. The individual was called to an idealistic ethic of obedience, work, self-sacrifice, and national community. As Gregor demonstrates, it was a paradigm of what we can expect in the twenty-first century's response, on the part of marginal nations, to the globalization of the industrialized democracies. Gregor cites post-Maoist China, nationalist Russia, Africa, and the Balkans at the development stage from which fascism could grow.The first book-length analysis in English of Gentile's thought in over thirty years, this volume is valuable not only as a work of historical scholarship but as a timely warning. While Marxism-Leninism has passed into history, fascism may yet reemerge as an external threat to democratic nations.

    Amid 3,500 acres of farmland in the countryside near Pienza, with sweeping views of the Tuscan landscape, La Foce was the childhood dream garden of the late writer Marchesa Iris Origo. Passionate about the order and symmetry of Florentine gardens, Origo and her husband, Antonio, purchased the dilapidated villa in 1924, soliciting the help of English architect and family friend Cecil Pinsent to reawaken the natural magic of the property. Pinsent designed the structure of simple, elegant, box-edged beds and green enclosures that give shape to the Origos' shrubs, perennials, and vines, and created a garden of soaring cypress walks, native cyclamen, lawns, and wildflower meadows. It is, by all accounts, a remarkable achievement.Today the garden is a place of unusual and striking beauty, a green oasis in the barren Siena countryside. Situated in the Val d'Orcia, a wide valley in southeastern Tuscany that seems to exist on a larger, wilder scale than the rest of the Tuscan landscape, it is run by Benedetta and Donata Origo, and is open to the public one day a week.La Foce: A Garden and Landscape in Tuscany is a contemplative, multifaceted study of the house, gardens, and estate of La Foce. It includes a historical essay and memoir by the daughter of La Foce's creators, Antonio and Iris Origo, along with photographs, sketches, and a critical analysis of the gardens. The volume not only focuses on the beauty of the gardens themselves and their indisputable merit as fascinating works of landscape architecture but also sees them within the context of both the larger Tuscan topography and the wider landscape of geography and history. The book will be a delight to armchair travelers, trade and landscape architects, gardeners, and those interested in Tuscan culture.

    From the water-lapped palaces along the Canal Grande to the buzzing Rialto market, the full-colour section introduces all of the regions highlights. With more cultural background than any other guide, you'll find detailed accounts of all Venice's monuments and museums, from San Marco to the far-flung islands and practical coverage of Verona, Padua, Vicenza, Treviso, and a host of other Veneto towns and sights. Opinionated reviews of all the best places to eat, drink and stay in every price range. The guide also takes a detailed look at the region's history, culture, events, painting and architecture and comes complete with maps and plans for every area.

    One's kin could be one's closest political and military allies or one's fiercest enemies. While the general term used to describe family members was consanguinei mei, those of my blood, not all of those relations-parents, siblings, children, distant cousins, maternal relatives, paternal ancestors, and so on-counted as true family in any given time, place, or circumstance. In the early and high Middle Ages, the family was a very different group than it is in modern society, and the ways in which medieval men and women conceptualized and structured the family unit changed markedly over time.Focusing on the Frankish realm between the eighth and twelfth centuries, Constance Brittain Bouchard outlines the operative definitions of family in this period when there existed various and flexible ways by which individuals were or were not incorporated into the family group. Even in medieval patriarchal society, women of the aristocracy, who were considered outsiders by their husbands and their husbands' siblings and elders, were never completely marginalized and paradoxically represented the very essence of family to their male children.Bouchard also engages in the ongoing scholarly debate about the nobility around the year 1000, arguing that there was no clear point of transition from amorphous family units to agnatically structured kindred. Instead, she points out that great noble families always privileged the male line of descent, even if most did not establish father-son inheritance until the eleventh or twelfth century. Those of My Blood clarifies the complex meanings of medieval family structure and family consciousness and shows the many ways in which negotiations of power within the noble family can help explain early medieval politics.

    How was their society organized? What were their homes like? What dangers did they face? These and other questions are answered in detail to provide the reader with a unique view of the world of the Italian Renaissance. A multitude of settings and socioeconomic backgrounds are presented, from urban life to country life, from upper-class to peasant-class, to paint a full portrait of the different kinds of existence of people of this culture.Recipes, profiles of actual individuals, and over 40 illustrations help bring the period to life. Learn what they ate, what their homes were like, how they spent their leisure time, what their work was like, and much more. Modern readers will be surprised to find fundamental similarities between our lives today and the lives of these people living over 500 years ago, as well as to discover that many of the perceptions they may have of this time period are inaccurate.

    The impassioned descriptions and informed perspectives in the pages of City Secrets Florence, Venice, and the Towns of Italy form an inspired tour of this most inspiring of countries.

    It is a memoir of horror and hope recounted by a man who survived the organized terror of Hitler’s "Final Solution" as it destroyed entire generations of European Jewish life within ten catastrophic years in the mid-twentieth century. Feldman’s memoir conveys the searing pain that has never left him, while demonstrating the triumphant humanity of a survivor.Feldman vividly describes the impact of the escalating anti-Semitic hatred and violence in Germany during the 1930s, the impact of the notorious Nuremberg Laws in 1935, and the terrifying Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938. By age sixteen, Feldman was living with his parents and three younger sisters in Antwerp, Belgium, during the 1939 German invasions of Poland, marking the start of World War II. In the face of increasing persecution, Feldman’s extended family scattered over the globe in a desperate attempt to remain one step ahead of their Nazi pursuers.Recalling his life on the run, Feldman describes what few survivors have chosen to write about: the Vichy raids of August 26, 1942; the French labor brigades; the Comité Dubouchage; and life in super-vised residence in France under the Italians. While in the south of France, Feldman endured food shortages and Nazi anti-Semitic measures, beginning with work camps and culminating in the deportation and ultimate death of his mother and sisters at Auschwitz.To evade the Germans, Feldman and his father fled into the Italian Alps in September of 1943, hiding between the Allies and the Germans. Aided by local villagers, the Feldmans survived precariously for over a year and a half, along with other Jewish refugees, until that region was liberated. Only then, and only gradually, did Feldman manage to piece together the fate of his surviving family and learn at last of the death of his mother and sisters.Now, as an adult, Alfred Feldman has retraced his escape and exile, taking his wife and children to his hometown in Germany, the mountains in Italy, and Montagnac, where a plaque commemorates his mother and sisters.

    Illustrations throughout.

    Salute!"--Wanda Tornabene, from the IntroductionFour years after winning the 1997 James Beard Award for Best Italian Cookbook, Wanda Tornabene and her daughter, Giovanna, return with a glorious second helping of homestyle recipes. Sicilian Home Cooking offers more charming stories and rustic, delicious dishes from the kitchen of Gangivecchio, the Tornabenes magnificent thirteenth-century abbey in Sicily's Madonie Mountains.As in the award-winning La Cucina Siciliana di Gangivecchio, here you'll find a wonderful array of simple, mouthwatering recipes for antipasti, soups, pasta, rice, meat, fish, vegetables, salads, and desserts including easy and delicious variations on bruschetta, the hearty Fagioli e Festoncini di Nonna Elena (Granny Elena's Bean and Pasta Soup), enticing entrees like Cotolette di Vitello di Wanda (Wanda's Veal Cutlets) and Gamberi in Crosta alla Gangivecchio (Gangivecchio's Shrimp en Croute), and sublime desserts like Cartocci (Fried Pastry Coils with Ricotta Cream) and Gelo di Caffe (Coffee Gelatine). Sicilian Home Cooking also offers some tempting new sections. Egg Dishes showcases this essential ingredient in beautiful frittatas. Pizza and Focaccia is a salute to these most Italian of breads, adorned with fresh toppings. The section on couscous teaches the traditional method for this Arab speciality, which Sicilians have adopted as their own. Wines and Liqueurs gives recipes for homemade, refreshing libations, including the Italian favorite, Limoncello.The homestyle recipes are nothing short of fantastic; but what makes this book even more special is that Wanda and Giovanna welcome you not only into their kitchen but also into their lives at Gangivecchio. In stories rich with the fragrant atmosphere of the gorgeous Sicilian countryside, they share memories of the annual grape harvest, a special Christmas snowstorm, and an illicit childhood trip on a commercial fishing boat. They describe favorite local restaurants and dishes from the past and the present. And they tell funny and touching stories of relatives, friends, and pets; both old and new.Sicilian Home Cooking is a cookbook and much more; a true slice of Sicilian life.

    That food is part of my heritage and culture. After twenty-five years of cooking professionally, I can truly say that the food of my region has been a constant source of inspiration in all I have done."Join author, cooking show host, and restaurateur Biba Caggiano on her journey back to her beloved region in Biba's Taste of Italy.Located in one of Italy's most prosperous northern regions, Emilia-Romagna has given the world a cuisine that is a luscious as it is refined: succulent seafood dishes from the Adriatic waters; hearty, long-simmered ragùs; and rich pasta shaped into tortellini, anolini, and lasagna. With Biba, dicover the place that's home to so much of what we've come to love in Italian food: prosciutto di Parma, Modena's aged balsamic vinegar, mortadella, and perhaps the world's greatest cheese, Parmigiano-Reggiano.Featuring more than 250 recipes, from antipasti to desserts, Biba introduces the vibrant food of her childhood: homestyle dishes and authentic recipes from humble trattorie and family-run restaurants. You'll learn how to make Tagliatelle with Bolognese Ragù; Eggplant Parmigiano that combines the salty-sweet flavors of Parma ham and Bolognese sausage; earthy, bread-thickened soups; Potato and Ricotta Gnocchi; and irresistible seafood risotto. Of course, the symbol Emilia-Romagna cooking -- stuffed pasta -- is here in all its glory with recipes for Ricotta and Goat Cheese Tortellini, Butternut Squash Tortellini, and Anolini in Broth, and so many more.From the region's coastal towns and villages, Biba shares the simply prepared seafood dishes of the local trattoric -- Clams with Garlic and Cile Pepper and Baked Halibut with Potatoes, plus the simple tastes of grilling shellfish with olive oil, lemon juice, and herbs. In the same rustic spirit, you will also find Roasted Stuffed Breast of Veal, Braised Veal Shanks, and succulent Breaded Lamb Chops.Biba's frequent family visits to Bologna evoke childhood memories of growing up in this food-lover's paradise, and reaffirms that the kitchen remains the heart and soul of Italian homes.Bib's Taste of Italy is more than a collection of recipes. It is also a travel guide with all the names and addresses of her favorite trattorie and restaurants where her favorite dishes can be found.Join Biba as she returns to Emilia-Romagna in Biba's Taste of Italy. It's a trip you will take again and again in your own kitchen.

    The battle scenes in Gladiator had you on the edge of your seat and wondering where you could find more information on the rise and fall of ancient Rome. But so far, your search has left you feeling like a blundering barbarian. Pick yourself up off the coliseum floor! Consult The Complete Idiot's Guide(R) to the Roman Empire--a fun-to-read introduction to the fascinating history, people, and culture of ancient Rome. In this Complete Idiot's Guide(R), you get: --The history of the Roman Empire's rise and fall. --An idiot-proof introduction to the great epic literature of the Roman Republic. --A survey of the Romans in arts and popular culture. --Fascinating details of some of history's most nefarious emperors, including Nero, Caligula, and Commodus.

    Paying tribute to music's realization by musicians and singers, she argues that operatic works are indelibly bound to the contingency of live singing, playing, and staging. She seeks a middle ground between operas as abstractions and performance as the phenomenon that brings opera into being.Weaving between opera's facts of life and a series of works including The Magic Flute, Parsifal, and Pell�as, Abbate explores a spectrum of attitudes towards musical performance, which range from euphoric visions of singers as creators to uncanny images of musicians as lifeless objects that have been resuscitated by scripts. In doing so, she touches upon several critical issues: the Wagner problem; coloratura, virtuosity, and their critics; the implications of disembodied voice in opera and film; mechanical music; the mortality of musical sound; and opera's predilection for scenes positing mysterious unheard music. An intersection between transcendence and intense physical grounding, she asserts, is a quintessential element of the genre, one source of the rapture that operas and their singers can engender in listeners. In Search of Opera mediates between an experience of opera that can be passionate and intuitive, and an intellectual engagement with opera as a complicated aesthetic phenomenon. Marrying philosophical speculation to historical detail, Abbate contemplates a central dilemma: the ineffability of music and the diverse means by which a fugitive art is best expressed in words. All serious devotees of opera will want to read this imaginative book by s music-critical virtuoso.

    From her early years in the photographic 'soap operas' of illustrated magazines to her Oscar for best actress, and beyond: the story of an extraordinary actress, a star who is unmatched.

    Traveling from north to south, as in the Villages volume, we encounter first the towns with substantial Etruscan and Romanesque features, then the walled towns of central Tuscany, followed by the coastal and thermal communities of the south. The country towns described and photographed in this book have been selected not only to exemplify the remarkable variety of this part of Italy but also because they embody its exceptional artistic and architectural heritage. There are works by Luca della Robbia and Donatello in Impruneta; Piero della Francesca was born in Sansepolcro. The architects of the Renaissance have left many masterpieces as well, often under the patronage of powerful local families: Michelozzo built the Villa Medici near Fiesole, while Giuliano da Sangallo designed the Medici fortress at Sansepolcro. Other aspects of the cultural heritage of these towns are more ancient: Volterra has the remains of Etruscan walls, and the Romans used the thermal springs at Chianciano Terme. A noted characteristic of Tuscan towns is their gastronomy. The wines of Chianti are well-paired with the beef of the Chiana Valley, while bread is justly celebrated in the area around Montecatini. Other markets feature nongastronomic delights: alabaster in Volterra, flowers in Pescia, books in Pontremoli. Twenty of the most beautiful towns of this opulent land are treated in this visual and textual feast by Alex Ramsay and James Bentley, which is completed by a guide to the principal sites, events, hotels, and restaurants of each town. 273 color illustrations.

    Over the course of fifteen hundred years, successive popes have commissioned and assembled an extraordinary collection of artistic works within Vatican walls.Eminent expert Professor Enrico Bruschini takes readers on a fascinating personal tour through the Vatican's magnificent sacred halls, vividly bringing to life works by Raphael, da Vinci, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, and many others, while sharing interesting curiosities about the artists, their art, and the historical context in which they worked. Bruschini's unprecedented access to areas rarely open to the public enables him to offer a unique behind-the-scenes tour that reveals the Vatican's most intimate secrets and hidden treasures. With maps and rare photographs from the Vatican archives, In the Footsteps of Popes is an extraordinary excursion that is not to be missed.

    Pastry chef and food stylist Victoria Granof has traveled throughout Sicily learning sweet secrets and local lore from the island's pastry chefs and home bakers, and the result is Sweet Sicily, a lushly photographed exploration of authentic Sicilian pastry-making.For more than two thousand years, Sicily has been coveted for its fertile land and unique location in the Mediterranean. The Greeks, Romans, Normans, Austrians, French, Bourbons, and Saracens have all landed on its shores, and in turn left their imprints on its food. Granof's magical tour takes us to Modica, where Franco and Pierpaolo Ruta of the Antica Dolceria Bonajuto create chocolate pastries using a five-hundred-year-old recipe that originated with the island's Bourbon conquerors, and to the Baroque town of Noto, where master pastry chef Corrado uses jasmine blossoms planted by Saracens more than a thousand years ago to flavor his jasmine gelato. Granof goes on a quest to find the most authentic ingredients and recipes, including delectable homemade ricotta made from the milk of sheep that graze on fragrant herbs and pistachios that grow in the shadow of Mount Etna, the island's still active volcano.In Sicily, every holiday and festival has its proper sweet accompaniment: marzipan lambs at Easter, honeyed pastry fritters at Christmas, crunchy, clove-scented cookies called "bones of the dead" for All Soul's Day. Granof explores these customs and festivals, gathering heirloom recipes, along with local anecdotes and advice. In addition to sweets that are already familiar to Americans, such as cannoli, cassata, and lemon ice, she introduces us to dozens of delectable pastries, confections, and cookies that are destined to become favorites as well.With a guide to festivals and pastry shops throughout the island, and nearly one hundred recipes formulated for use in American kitchens, Sweet Sicily is an unforgettable exploration of the desserts of the world's most beguiling island.

    He charts the Spaghetti Western careers of actors like Lee Van Cleef and Terence Hill as they rode the trail to international success.

    With this study, military historian Dwight Messimer examines the weapons, tactics, and organization used by all the belligerents during the war and provides some surprising findings. Because he draws heavily from personal accounts as well as from official records, his book will appeal to both serious readers seeking hard facts and to general readers who like stories about war at sea.Messimer tells the story from both sides. German survivors who escaped from sunken U-boats explain what it was like to face the newly developed ASW weapons beneath the surface, and pilots tell what it was like from above. The author describes the German's well-organized and efficient ASW organization in the Baltic and the Helgoland Bight. He also discusses the weapons developed during the war that proved to be largely ineffective or outright failures. While his evaluations of the contributions made by aircraft and Q-ships put them in the category of only marginally effective, his analysis of the effectiveness of politics deems that ASW "weapon" the most effective of all. Solidly grounded in the best primary sources available in England, the United States, and Germany, this book is the first to address the ASW of all World War I belligerents.