A child of Italian immigrants and scholar of Italian literature paints an intimate portrait that blends together history and the unusual to show how his 'two Italies' join and clash in unexpected ways.

A study of the economic development in twelfth-century Italy of Sicily and the maritime ports.

Traces the intellectual life of Italy, where humanism began a century before it influenced the rest of Europe.

An effortlessly artful blend of travel book, memoir, and affectionate portrait of a people Calabria is the toe of the boot that is Italy—a rugged peninsula where grapevines and fig and olive trees cling to the mountainsides during the scorching summers while the sea crashes against the cliffs on both coasts. Calabria is also a seedbed of Italian American culture; in North America, more people of Italian heritage trace their roots to Calabria than to almost any other region in Italy. Mark Rotella's Stolen Figs is a marvelous evocation of Calabria and Calabrians, whose way of life is largely untouched by the commerce that has made Tuscany and Umbria into international tourist redoubts. A grandson of Calabrian immigrants, Rotella persuades his father to visit the region for the first time in thirty years; once there, he meets Giuseppe, a postcard photographer who becomes his guide to all things Calabrian. As they travel around the region, Giuseppe initiates Rotella—and the reader—into its secrets: how to make soppressata and 'nduja, where to find hidden chapels and grottoes, and, of course, how to steal a fig without actually committing a crime. Stolen Figs is a model travelogue—at once charming and wise, and full of the earthy and unpretentious sense of life that, now as ever, characterizes Calabria and its people.

This book examines the Italy of the 1980s, which represents an unparalleled example of dualistic development - deeply divided between North and South.

Antonio Carluccio and Gennaro Contaldo embark on a journey to explore Italy's distinct and varied terrains, and to find out how these have shaped the produce and, in turn, the peoples and their traditions.