What Are Some Seminal Books about Italy, Fiction or Nonfiction?
Jan 16th, 2012, 05:58 PM
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 49,560
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
What Are Some Seminal Books about Italy, Fiction or Nonfiction?
SO's son is headed to Rome for next semester and wants reccos for books to read. I'm drawing a blank except for Christ Stopped at Eboli and The Pillars of Hercules (which wasn't about Italy per se, but rather the Mediterranean). Isn't there some Michener or other classic history of Rome?
Jan 16th, 2012, 06:15 PM
#2
Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 2,683
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone - a fabulous biography of Michelangelo, must read for anyone headed to Italy IMHO.
I, Claudius by Robert Graves - I personally found this a bit slow and didn't finish it, but others may like it better than I.
I, Claudius by Robert Graves - I personally found this a bit slow and didn't finish it, but others may like it better than I.
Jan 16th, 2012, 06:28 PM
#3
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 26,710
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Besides I Claudius
The Decameron by Boccaccio, 14th century
Julius Caeser by The Bard
The works of Dario Fo, which are uneven but won the Nobel in the late 1990's.
Primo Levi for some post WWII insight.
There are many, many more.
The Decameron by Boccaccio, 14th century
Julius Caeser by The Bard
The works of Dario Fo, which are uneven but won the Nobel in the late 1990's.
Primo Levi for some post WWII insight.
There are many, many more.
Jan 16th, 2012, 06:30 PM
#4
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 26,710
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Sorry, one of my favorites took place in Florence, Brunelleschi's Dome. Not only did he create a brilliant and elegant solution to a long-standing problem, but told the wrong people to go to hell.
Jan 16th, 2012, 07:20 PM
#5
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 5,830
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Maybe not seminal but extremely readable and enlightening: two biographies by Anthony . "Cicero" and "Augustus". Augustus was really the most important of the Caesars. "I, Claudius" was also good.
The Lives of the Artists by Vasari
The Prince by Machiavelli (I found it somewhat hard going)
Plus the ones listed above. Also Mary McCarthy wrote "Venice" and "Florence Observed". which are kind of inaccurate and mostly made up, it turns out. But good reads.
Dante's Inferno, although that's not easy reading either. Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars. Herodotus is entertaining and has some pretty bizarre stuff in it that he obviously never saw himself but only heard about from other people.
The Lives of the Artists by Vasari
The Prince by Machiavelli (I found it somewhat hard going)
Plus the ones listed above. Also Mary McCarthy wrote "Venice" and "Florence Observed". which are kind of inaccurate and mostly made up, it turns out. But good reads.
Dante's Inferno, although that's not easy reading either. Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars. Herodotus is entertaining and has some pretty bizarre stuff in it that he obviously never saw himself but only heard about from other people.
Jan 16th, 2012, 07:28 PM
#6
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 5,830
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
That's Anthony Everitt who wrote the biographies of Cicero and Augustus.
Leonardo da Vince: Flights of the Mind. by Charles Nicholl.
And for good fun reading, Steve Saylor's series of books featuring Gordianus the finder, solving all kinds of mysteries based on real historical incidents in the time of Julius Caesar. I did not think Saylor's Rome or Empire ( history told through fictional characters) were very good from a literary perspective but he did cover a lot of Roman History in them.
Leonardo da Vince: Flights of the Mind. by Charles Nicholl.
And for good fun reading, Steve Saylor's series of books featuring Gordianus the finder, solving all kinds of mysteries based on real historical incidents in the time of Julius Caesar. I did not think Saylor's Rome or Empire ( history told through fictional characters) were very good from a literary perspective but he did cover a lot of Roman History in them.
Jan 16th, 2012, 08:24 PM
#9
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 1,853
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Jan 17th, 2012, 01:37 AM
#11
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 12,268
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
http://www.amazon.com/Roman-Empire-i.../2J6CQ35GIAK2W
Quo Vadis for a delightful novel of Christianity in Neros
time also. Humberto Eco Name of the Rose. My top 3
Quo Vadis for a delightful novel of Christianity in Neros
time also. Humberto Eco Name of the Rose. My top 3
Jan 17th, 2012, 01:39 AM
#12
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 12,268
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Amazon.com: The Name of the Rose ... abbey in the mountains of northern Italy. ... Name of the Rose " is a medieval murder mystery by author Umberto Eco. ...
http://www.amazon.com/Name-Everymans...ntemporary/dp/
http://www.amazon.com/Name-Everymans...ntemporary/dp/
Jan 17th, 2012, 01:42 AM
#13
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 12,268
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
http://www.amazon.com/Angels-Demons-.../dp/0743486226
also very entertaining readable for Rome if he has not
seen the movie.
also very entertaining readable for Rome if he has not
seen the movie.
Jan 17th, 2012, 01:59 AM
#14
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 616
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I'll add Gibbon's the Decline and fall of the Roman Empire as a comprehensive history and Mann's Death in Venice as light reading.
Then again pretty much anything is light compared to the Gibbon book.
Then again pretty much anything is light compared to the Gibbon book.
Jan 17th, 2012, 05:06 AM
#15
Join Date: Dec 2005
Posts: 10,169
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Barzini's The Italians and any of Tim Rice's books provide useful cultural background. Rice is an Englishman, married to an Italian, resident in Italy where he actually works rather than restoring houses with the aid of incredibly craftsmen who magically appear when needed. His books are funny nad charming and show how the process of buying an apartment, going to the beach, or educating your children really works.
Mann's "Deat in Venice" as light reading? Hmmm. What about Mahler's "Kindertotenlieder" as a little light listening? Or was that too snarky? People, this is a student!
Mann's "Deat in Venice" as light reading? Hmmm. What about Mahler's "Kindertotenlieder" as a little light listening? Or was that too snarky? People, this is a student!
Jan 17th, 2012, 06:14 AM
#16
Join Date: Apr 2003
Posts: 17,268
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
If the question refers to the country he's going to live in (pop 60 million: founded 1861), Barzini is still unsurpassed, though Delizia! by John Dickie is a terrific antidote to the gibberish about Italian food trotted out by the gullible on sites like this and on gastro-porn TV shows.
If it refers to the past few thousand years on the peninsula, few now regard Gibbon as much more than an anti-Christian bigot (and a near-insane anti-Catholic bigot) with an intermittently good literary style any more. For serious history about the fall of the Roman Empire, Peter Heather's Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History is based on real research about events leading up to what's probably the most widely misunderstood major event in the formation of the modern world.
More charitably: our knowledge of what happened in Italy between the foundation of Rome in 753 BC and the fifth century AD has advanced hugely since Gibbon completed his ponderous, but now hopelessly ill-informed, book in 1788. Simon Baker's Rome: Rise and Fall of an Empire is the most up to date (and readable) summary for a general reader of what we now know about those 1,000 years.
The Blue Guide to Rome is the most comprehensive (though the current edition contains less than half the information of editions 30 years earlier) compendium of basic facts about the city's entire history to around 2000, and of commentary on the visitable remains of the whole nigh on 3,000 year span. Not just a terrifically useful present, but one of the best single examples of why iPads and smartphones cannot adequately substitute for a properly organised and portable real book. Resist firmly the temptation to give him the Kindle version.
If it refers to the past few thousand years on the peninsula, few now regard Gibbon as much more than an anti-Christian bigot (and a near-insane anti-Catholic bigot) with an intermittently good literary style any more. For serious history about the fall of the Roman Empire, Peter Heather's Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History is based on real research about events leading up to what's probably the most widely misunderstood major event in the formation of the modern world.
More charitably: our knowledge of what happened in Italy between the foundation of Rome in 753 BC and the fifth century AD has advanced hugely since Gibbon completed his ponderous, but now hopelessly ill-informed, book in 1788. Simon Baker's Rome: Rise and Fall of an Empire is the most up to date (and readable) summary for a general reader of what we now know about those 1,000 years.
The Blue Guide to Rome is the most comprehensive (though the current edition contains less than half the information of editions 30 years earlier) compendium of basic facts about the city's entire history to around 2000, and of commentary on the visitable remains of the whole nigh on 3,000 year span. Not just a terrifically useful present, but one of the best single examples of why iPads and smartphones cannot adequately substitute for a properly organised and portable real book. Resist firmly the temptation to give him the Kindle version.
Jan 17th, 2012, 06:39 AM
#17
The recently published <i>Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History</i>, by Robert Hughes has received enthusiastic reviews and might be a good place to start. After a broad overview such as this, he can home in on the periods and subjects that interest him.
http://www.amazon.com/Rome-Cultural-...6814364&sr=8-3
http://www.amazon.com/Rome-Cultural-...6814364&sr=8-3
Jan 17th, 2012, 06:43 AM
#18
Join Date: Oct 2010
Posts: 1,254
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Do the lad a favour, and get him this as soon as you can:
http://www.amazon.com/Italian-Neighb...6813547&sr=1-7
That way he'll also: have time to get through "An Italian Education" before he leaves, avoid the embarrassment of being seen with either in Rome - and understand just a little about the people whose country he'll be sharing!
Peter
PS - Perhaps that's actually whom Ackislander meant - Tim Rice is a very different person....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Rice
http://www.amazon.com/Italian-Neighb...6813547&sr=1-7
That way he'll also: have time to get through "An Italian Education" before he leaves, avoid the embarrassment of being seen with either in Rome - and understand just a little about the people whose country he'll be sharing!
Peter
PS - Perhaps that's actually whom Ackislander meant - Tim Rice is a very different person....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Rice
Jan 17th, 2012, 07:52 AM
#20
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 2,012
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
StCirq: H.V.Morton wrote in the 60's travel books about Italy: A Traveller in Italy, and A Traveller in Rome. He was English, with a witty and informative style.
I have found these books (and the operative word IS "found" as they may be out of print, though some of his other books have been re-printed in paperback recently) to be full of good information, but also very readable.
Don't know the young man, and these might be better reads for us older travelers, but worth a look.
I have found these books (and the operative word IS "found" as they may be out of print, though some of his other books have been re-printed in paperback recently) to be full of good information, but also very readable.
Don't know the young man, and these might be better reads for us older travelers, but worth a look.
