Bringing the World to You! Italy: Food & Culture

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Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher Lonely Planet's Southern Italy is your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Island-hop around the Aeolian Islands, soak up the atmosphere of the Amalfi Coast and explore ghostly Pompeii - all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Southern Italy and begin your journey now! Inside Lonely Planet's Southern Italy:

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DK Eyewitness travel guides: award-winning guidebooks Discover Italy with this essential travel guide, designed to help you create your own unique trip and to transport you to this beautiful country before you've even packed your case - step back in time in Rome, explore the stunning Tuscan countryside, tuck into pizza in Naples or ride the waterways in Venice. The DK Eyewitness Guide to Italy covers the must-see sights and the

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Lonely Planet: The world's number one travel guide publisher Whether exploring your own backyard or somewhere new, discover the freedom of the open road with Lonely Planet's Italy's Best Trips. Featuring 40 amazing road trips, plus up-to-date advice on the destinations you'll visit along the way, you can stroll Rome's romantic lanes or take in the majesty of the Dolomites - all with your trusted travel companion. Jump in the car, turn up the tunes, and hit the road!

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Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher Lonely Planet Sardinia is your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Get pleasantly lost in Sardinia's wild Barbagia and Ogliastra provinces, kayak through the sea grottoes of Golfo di Orosei, or boulder-hop at Gola Su Gorropu - Europe's Grand Canyon -all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Sardinia and begin your journey now!

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Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher Lonely Planet's Sicily is your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Soak up history in charming Syracuse, hike Stromboli's lava-strewn crater, and visit crumbling castles in gorgeous hill towns - all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Sicily and begin your journey now!

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Lonely Planet: The world's number one travel guide publisher* Lonely Planet's Best of Rome is your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Imagine the roar of the crowds in the Colosseum, crane your neck at the Sistine Chapel, and sample every single flavour of pizza and gelato the city offers - all with your trusted travel companion. Discover the best of Rome and begin your journey now!

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Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher Lonely Planet's Naples, Pompeii & the Amalfi Coast is your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Meander past orange groves and swaying pines to reach steep seaside towns, go cave diving off the Capri coast and contemplate the silent power of Mt. Vesuvius - all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Naples, Pompeii & the Amalfi Coast and begin your journey now!

Not only was Leonardo da Vinci (1453-1519) an astonishing painter, but also a scientist, anatomist, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer, inventor, and more. The question is rather, what was he not? During the Italian Renaissance, he mastered the most beautiful works of art for the Medicis' in Italy and for the King of France. He aroused admiration from his contemporaries, who depicted a universal genius, curious and virtuous. Even today, interest in da Vinci and his work does not fade; his works and writings are still studied by foremost experts hoping to decipher one of the numerous secrets of this visionary artist.

The Medici court painter Botticelli is one of the unequivocal artists of the Italian Renaissance alongside Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Favoring feminine portraits, Botticelli stands apart through the finesse of his lines and the unbridled sensuality of his paintings. Between religious and private commissions this Florentine artist introduced the profane into art through works of complex mythological subjects, such as the incontrovertibly masterful Primavera and The Birth of Venus.

During the Renaissance, new ideas progressed alongside new ways of communicating them, and nowhere is this more visible than in the art of this period. In The Sensory World of Italian Renaissance Art, François Quiviger explores the ways in which the senses began to take on a new significance in the art of the sixteenth century. The book discusses the presence and function of sensation in Renaissance ideas and practices, investigating their link to mental imagery--namely, how Renaissance artists made touch, sound, and scent palpable to the minds of their audience.

A prominent writer, a master painter, and a treasure of art that for centuries had been largely neglected are brought brilliantly to life in this first important study of one of the great legacies of Renaissance art. The immense castle at Cataio, about thirty-five miles from Venice, was built between 1570 and 1573. An extraordinary series of frescoes, painted in 1573, covers the walls of six of its palatial halls. Programmed by Giuseppe Betussi, the forty frescoes depict momentous events in the history of the Obizzi family from 1004 to 1422. Executed by Giambattista Zelotti and assistants, the frescoes, plus ceiling decorations, are painted in a Mannerist, highly illusionist style with such skill that the walls seem to be windows through which one views battle scenes, weddings, political negotiations, and other episodes in the dramatic history of the Obizzi family.Now one of the most distinguished scholars of Italian art takes readers room by room, fresco by fresco, on the first guided tour of this Betussi-Zelotti masterpiece.

Mantegna was born in 1431. He trained in painting at the Padua School where Donatello and Paolo Uccello had previously attended. Even at a young age commissions for Andrea's work flooded in, for example the frescoes of the Ovetari Chapel of Padua. In a short space of time Mantegna found his niche as a modernist due to his highly original ideas; the use of perspective in his works. His marriage with Nicolosia Bellini, the sister of Giovanni, paved the way for his

Tracing the extraordinary trajectory of Caesar's life from birth through assassination, historian Goldsworthy covers not only Caesar's accomplishments as charismatic orator, conquering general, and powerful dictator, but also lesser-known chapters during which he was high priest of an exotic cult, captive of pirates, seducer not only of Cleopatra but also of the wives of his two main political rivals, and a rebel condemned by his own country. Goldsworthy realizes the full complexity of Caesar's character, places his subject firmly within the context of Roman society in the first century B.C., and shows why his political and military leadership continues to resonate some two thousand years later.

The career of Theoderic the Ostrogoth is one of the great success stories of antiquity. From being a ruler of a barbarian people wandering around the Balkans, he became king in Italy (493-526) and established one of the most powerful of the post-Roman states.

Benito Mussolini was a brilliant Socialist journalist who in 1914 declared war, put himself at the head if the anti-Socialist movement in Italy, manoeuvred himself into power by 1933 and ruled the country until overthrown in 1943. He was a dynamic but insecure personality, who appeared dictatorial but always had to share power with the military and bureaucratic establishment.  Mussolini founded an Empire in Africa and tried to 'make Italians' in his own heroic, war like image, but in fact failed to even control his own family! In June 1940, when France fell, he could not resist joining in the Second World War on the German side, although Italy was not equipped for serious fighting. His rule ended in Military disaster and personal humiliation. This new biography focuses both on Mussolini's personality and on the way he exercised power, and regards these two issues as closely linked.

On 19 April 1940 Celso Costantini prophetically wrote in his diary that if Italy followed Hitler into war, it would be allying itself with the "Anti-Christ." Within weeks, Mussolini's fascist regime plunged Italy into the destructive maelstrom of global military conflict. The ensuing years brought world war, the fall of fascism, occupation, liberation, and the emergence of a new political order. The Secrets of a Vatican Cardinal is an extraordinary and detailed behind-the-scenes account of crucial episodes in Europe's wartime history from a unique vantage point: the Vatican and the Eternal City. Costantini, a close advisor to Pope Pius XII, possessed a perspective few of his contemporaries could match. His diaries offer new insights into the great issues of the time - the Nazi occupation, the fall of Mussolini, the tumultuous end of the Italian monarchy, the birth of republican democracy in Italy, and the emergence of a new international order - while also recounting heartbreaking stories of the suffering, perseverance, and heroism of ordinary people.

Utah State University professor, Frances Titchener delivers a course that will examine important events and key figures of the epoch. Major themes will be explored while touching upon the fascinating details of Roman life, such as the Romans' intensely hierarchical social order.

A Companion to Roman Italy investigates the impact of Rome in all its forms--political, cultural, social, and economic--upon Italy's various regions, as well as the extent to which unification occurred as Rome became the capital of Italy. The collection presents new archaeological data relating to the sites of Roman Italy. Contributions discuss new theories of how to understand cultural change in the Italian peninsula. Combines detailed case-studies of particular sites with wider-ranging thematic chapters. Leading contributors not only make accessible the most recent work on Roman Italy, but also offer fresh insight on long standing debates

The Age of Justinian examines the reign of the great emperor Justinian (527-565) and his wife Theodora, who advanced from the theatre to the throne. The origins of the irrevocable split between East and West, between the Byzantine and the Persian Empire are chronicled, which continue up to the present day. The book looks at the social structure of sixth century Byzantium, and the neighbours that surrounded the empire. It also deals with Justinian's wars, which restored Italy, Africa and a part of Spain to the empire.

An engrossing volume on the Italian Renaissance by Pulitzer Prize winning historian Will Durant. The fifth volume of Durant's acclaimed Story of Civilization, The Renaissance chronicles the history of Italy from 1304 to 1576. In this masterful work, listeners will encounter the poets Petrarch and Boccaccio, the fathers of the Renaissance; the paintings, sculptures, and architecture of Milan, Florence, and Venice;the life and accomplishments of Leonardo Da Vinci; the Catholic church and the popes of Avignon and Rome;the politicians and philosophers of Italy, including the Borgia family, Julius II, and Machiavelli;the Italian Wars, the conflicts with France, and the country's decline.

In this fascinating study, Alison Cole explores the distinctive uses of art at the five great secular courts of Naples, Urbino, Ferrara, Mantua, and Milan. The princes who ruled these city-states, vying with each other and with the great European courts, relied on artistic patronage to promote their legitimacy and authority. Major artists and architects, from Mantegna and Pisanello to Bramante and Leonardo da Vinci, were commissioned to design, paint, and sculpt, but also to oversee thecourt's building projects and entertainments.

The era of the Scientific Revolution has long been epitomized by Galileo. Yet many women were at its vanguard, deeply invested in empirical culture. They experimented with medicine and practical alchemy at home, at court, and through collaborative networks of practitioners. In academies, salons, and correspondence, they debated cosmological discoveries; in their literary production, they used their knowledge of natural philosophy to argue for their intellectual equality to men. Meredith Ray restores the work of these women to our understanding of early modern scientific culture.

The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars raged in Italy for 23 years. In that time, no fewer than eight campaigns involving hundred of thousands of troops were mounted in the Italian peninsula, as France and Austria struggled over this secondary, but still vitally important theater of war. As Frederick Schneid demonstrates in this groundbreaking work, control of Italy was rightly seen by Napoleon as an important means of applying strategic pressure on the Austrians, while simultaneously providing security for France's vulnerable southern flank. As the first in-depth consideration of the struggle for strategically key region, this book places the Italian campaigns into their proper historical context. Beginning with a geo-strategic overview of the Italian peninsula and its place in French and Austrian calculations, Schneid moves on to a careful consideration of the major campaigns that began in 1805, 1809, and 1813. These include studies of the battles at Caldiero, Wagram, and Mincio. The book also provides appendices with complete orders of battle for each campaign.

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*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading "Few people in 1830 believed that an Italian nation might exist. There were eight states in the peninsula, each with distinct laws and traditions. No one had had the desire or the resources to revive Napoleon's partial experiment in unification. The settlement of 1814-15, had merely restored regional divisions, with the added disadvantage that the decisive victory of Austria over France temporarily hindered Italians in playing off their former oppressors against each other. ... The First Italian War of Independence: The History and Legacy of the Revolutions that started the process of Italy's Unification chronicles the turbulent events that led to 1848, and how the revolutions of that year set Italy on the path to unification. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the First Italian War of Independence like never before.

This colorful book recounts in detail the fall of Italy's "First Republic" in 1994 when voters abandoned the old centrist political parties that had dominated the political system since 1947. This dramatic shift resulted from the efforts of a small group of "magistrates" (prosecuting judges) who the exposed the corruption in the government parties in the early 1990s.

Not a Normal Country explores Italian politics and culture in the era of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's richest man and one of its longest serving prime ministers. Geoff Andrews argues that the 'Berlusconi phenomenon' was a populist response to widespread cynicism towards politics. Berlusconi posed as an 'anti-politician', and based his appeal on his virtues as a salesman rather than a statesman.The second part of the book discusses the varied opposition to Berlusconi. This ranges from the anti-global demonstrations in Genoa in 2001 to unconventional protests such as the Girotondo movement led by the film director Nanni Moretti. According to Andrews, this new associationism has helped rebuild Italian politics.Finally, Andrews looks to the future and, through the examples of anti-mafia protests in Sicily as well as opposition to the Americanisation of Italian culture, considers the prospects for the new post-Berlusconi Italy.