Italy Memoirs

Rosie is facing the ultimate ‘empty mansion syndrome’ in her 22-roomed Italian villa. With both her kids now living in different countries and the funds to finish renovations going AWOL, Rosie is starting to suspect that the Sighing House might be a tad too big for just her and hubby Ronan. To make matters worse, with Ronan’s pending criminal court case—following his encounters with a toupee rat pack and the anti-Mafia special police squad—Rosie may soon be the only resident in the house.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) was recognized in his lifetime as the greatest living artist, creator of a succession of masterpieces in sculpture, fresco painting, and architecture. In all his work, Michelangelo impressed his contemporaries as a forceful personality, a divine genius endowed with terribilita, or intense emotional power.

What do you do when your adult kids fly the nest and you are having a midlife crisis during a global pandemic? You buy a 22 room derelict villa in Italy while grocery shopping of course. Well, that is what Rosie did.

When Ye Pei dreamed of Venice as a girl, she imagined a magical floating city of canals and gondola rides. And she imagined her mother, successful in her new life and eager to embrace the daughter she had never forgotten. But when Ye Pei arrives in Italy, she learns her mother works on a farm far from the city. Her only connection, a mean-spirited Chinese auntie, puts Ye Pei to work in a small-town café. Rather than giving up and returning to China, a determined Ye Pei takes on a grueling schedule.

Commissioned in 1750, the Palazzo Venier was planned as a testimony to the power and wealth of a great Venetian family, but the fortunes of the Venier family waned, and the project was left abandoned and unfinished. Yet in the early 20th century, it attracted three fascinating women: Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse and Peggy Guggenheim.

Galileo Galilei began his career as a mathematician. Yet as fate would have it, he became far more than a numbers whiz. Here was a true Renaissance man; one who was greatly educated and a genuine lover of the arts. He was a fan of poets and a fine lute player. When in 1609 Galileo created his first telescope and turned his attention to the skies, everything changed.

Beginning with the often violent circumstances of Dante's life, the book examines his successive works as testimony to the course of his passionate humanity: his lyric poetry through to the Vita nova as the great work of his first period; the Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia and the poems of his early years in exile; and the Monarchia and the Commedia as the product of his maturity.

In 1967, veteran travel writer Eric Newby and his heroic wife, Wanda, fulfilled their dream of a return to life in the Italian hills where they first met during World War II. But this fulfillment would not come easy. The dream materialised in the form of I Castagni ('The Chestnuts'), a small, decrepit farmhouse with no roof, an abandoned septic tank and its own indigenous wildlife reluctant to give up their home. But in the foothills of the Apuan Alps on the border of Liguria and Northern Tuscany, this ramshackle house would soon become a hub of love, friendship and activity.

From one of the foremost medievalists of our time, a groundbreaking work on history and memory that goes well beyond the life of this influential saint.

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?

This is the story of freedom fighters who defied Italy’s despot by opposing the rising tide of populism and xenophobia. Chief among them: poet and aviator Lauro de Bosis, firstborn of an Italian aristocrat and a New Englander, who transformed himself into a modern Icarus and amazed the world as he risked his life in the skies to bring Il Duce down. Taras Grescoe’s inspiring story of resistance, risk, and sacrifice paints a portrait of heroes in the fight against authoritarianism. This is an essential biography for our time.

"Arrestato alle ore 22,30 dell'8 novembre 1926, davanti all'ingresso di via Morgagni 25, dimora dei Passarge, l'onorevole Gramsci venne tradotto al carcere di Regina Coeli. In quella manciata di minuti fu decretata la fine, o quasi, dell'attività politica di un militante appassionato e coraggioso, anche se si aprì la strada all'opera di un gigante del pensiero, politico, ma non solo." Angelo d'Orsi racconta questa storia dall'infanzia in Sardegna agli studi a Torino, da Mosca a Vienna, da Roma al carcere di Turi, fino alla clinica romana dove spirerà il 27 aprile 1937.

Acclaimed author Andrea di Robilant sweeps listeners back to 18th-century Venice for a spellbinding tale of forbidden love. Originally serialized in The New Yorker, this dazzling story is based on actual family letters. The letters describe a searing and illicit affair between the author’s ancestor, a great Venetian statesman, and a beautiful half-English girl. The couple pursued their passion with reckless abandon, offending nearly everyone, and even getting some help along the way from the infamous Casanova.

From the time she first felt called to its gates as a high school student fascinated by Dante and Italian thanks to a life-changing teacher, Rome has been a fixed star around which Alizah Holstein’s life has rotated—despite the fact that she bears no Italian heritage, and has never lived there long enough to call it home. In this kaleidoscopic yet intimate memoir, her shifting relationship to a vibrant city layered with human history becomes a lens on why we look to the past, on the mysteries of affinity and desire, and on what it means to grow up.

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.

Bologna, 1858: A police posse, acting on the orders of a Catholic inquisitor, invades the home of a Jewish merchant, Momolo Mortara, wrenches his crying six-year-old son from his arms, and rushes him off in a carriage bound for Rome. His mother is so distraught that she collapses and has to be taken to a neighbor's house, but her weeping can be heard across the city. With this terrifying scene - one that would haunt this family forever - David I. Kertzer begins his fascinating investigation of the dramatic kidnapping.

Discover the hidden enigmas that lie beneath the surface of Italy’s rich and storied past. Unsolved Mysteries of Italy: Murders, Mysteries, and the Paranormal by Theodore F. Johnboro takes you on a captivating journey through the eerie and unexplained events that have mystified investigators, stirred local legends, and gripped the imagination of generations.

David Gross is working as a corporate lawyer in New York when he gets a call from a friend inviting him to move to Bologna to help turn around a legendary Italian motorcycle company, known for its dominance on the track and its inability to turn a profit. Off he heads to the fabled home of marbled meats, radical leftist politics, and bespoke shoes, diving into his new life as the "corporate image consultant" to gearheads while learning to navigate the giddy mores of Bolognese society.

Letters from Italy is a story of true love that spans an ocean. Against all odds, an orphaned girl and a young dreamer find solace in a romance sparked by a single photo and years of transatlantic letters. From a tiny Italian town in pre-WWII to New York City in her golden age, hopeful immigrants take a chance at living the American dream.

Al principio del ventesimo secolo, a seguito di una crisi di colera che devastò Napoli, la giornalista Matilde Serao volle raccontare al mondo il "ventre" della città, quei quartieri popolari abitati da schiere di poveri costretti all'antica e ingegnosa arte del tirare a campare. Città bella ma dimenticata dallo stato sabaudo, la Napoli di inizio '900 era preda di degrado urbano, crimine organizzato e malattie cui il popolo abbandonato faceva fronte attraverso uno sconfinato repertorio di credenze e superstizioni.