No comments about Village Walks: Tuscany: 50 Adventures on Foot (City Walks).

5 comments about Italian Survival Guide: The Language and Culture You Need to Travel with Confidence in Italy.

1. This guide is as practical and useful as Bingham's German Survival Guide. While the vocabulary lessons are helpful, the culture notes are priceless. This is a great introduction to both the Italian language and to Italy and the length is just right so that the traveler with little time to prep should not be overwhelmed.



2. Bingham's book Italian Survival Guide is a must-have resource to pack in your travel bag for Italy! This book is practical; including pronunciation guides for many of the common phrases used to interact with native Italians. I particularly appreciated the Culture Note sections interspersed through the book. I visited Rome and Florence last year, and found these sections accurate and insightful--a big help to the traveler who does not want to look like a tourist!
   
   This book is invaluable and I plan to have a copy stuffed in my handbag when I return to Italy in 2009!



3. I read the cultural insights on Italy first. They are great! The practical hints are superb. Even though I speak Italian, I will take this book with me when I go to Italy.



4. Elizabeth Bingham's Italian Survival Guide is clear and concise in its presentation of the most important information a traveler needs to use while traveling in Italy. The guide is organized well; therefore, finding the information one wants is not difficult. The pronunciation guide is invaluable. The book itself is not so big that a person gets lost in it when trying to find a specific piece of information. The cultural notes are short and to the point, so that one can read them quickly and gain important information about interacting with the people of Italy. I would be apt to photocopy the information on the inside front and back covers to carry along on daily excursions. Overall, this guide would be extremely helpful to take on a trip to Italy!



5. I have bought just about every book on Italy and this is one of the best! It has great tips and information! Unlike other books, I find this information to be truthful! I lived in Italy and now take students on exchanges every year. This book has really helped them! I think it's a must! :-)

5 comments about Frommer's Rome (Frommer's Complete).

1. I have just returned from my second trip to Rome, and I used this book as my primary travel guide. I have also used this series in other cities. Compared to other series, the Frommer's guides stand out in that they focus more on hotel and restaurant recommendations than on historical or practical information.
   
   With that in mind, the restaurant options in this edition seemed to be limited only to locations off major squares or else near the train station, offering very little off the beaten track or for budget travellers.
   
   The information provided for the attractions, such as the museums and ruins, etc. was accurate, although very basic: hours and prices but little historical information. Sometimes the guide would direct one's attention to a particular column or square, but neglect to explain its significance. The recommended restaurants were good, but there was more missing than was included. A guide claiming to offer information on "what's worth your time and what's not" did very little to justify the exclusions... and the fact that several of the recommended restaurants and attractions didn't appear on any of the included maps doesn't support the recommendation at all!
   
   Overall, the maps need to be more complete, to consistently reflect the textual content of the book. Furthermore, it seems suspicious for a guide with so very few included recommendations to have some that were across the street from each other, suggesting very lazy rather than comprehensive coverage of what the city has to offer. Moreover, the photographs on the cover were stock photographs, having nothing to do with any actual experiences of the writers, whose recent actual trip to Rome can only be the object of assumption.
   
   Also, some travellers may find it difficult to trust a guide which includes advertisements for web-based hotel finding agencies.
   
   I would recommend this book for anyone with more money than taste, or who is more interested in getting his or her passport stamped than in becoming educated about Rome, then or now. Just so you know: There's plenty of shopping on Via Corso.



2. Very strong on hotel reviews (25 pages), restaurant reviews (36 pages), plus the Frommer Best Bets for both categories. Maybe a little weak on the description of the sightseeing places of interest, being perhaps too brief sometimes, but the walking tours are very good, the shopping lists and traveler's facts are very solid and reliable.
   Very good pre trip book for hotel listings and walking tour ideas, not necessarily the book to carry with you in the street.



3. I bought this book about two weeks before I visited Rome and used it and its associated map as my guide through Rome over Easter weekend. I found the book and the map pretty difficult to use. Many major attractions in the book are not noted on the map, and many street names are missing from the map. It took me an inordinate amount of time just to figure out where the catacombs really were. Further, there are beautiful descriptions of things to see, but no pictures. That's a problem if you want to get an idea of what something looks like before you decide to invest the time in your itinerary to go see it. Further, in a city that has very few signs describing its buildings and sites (or the signs are in Italian only) you really need a book with pictures just to identify what you are looking at at times. This book is not good at that. The itineraries were sometimes confusing and conflicting. There is a section on an itinerary if you have one day which takes you through ancient Rome, then in a different section of the book the ancient Rome itinerary starts at a different location. If you really are new to a city, you probably want to rely on the book to suggest a good itinerary, not offer confusing and conflicting options. The book tended to jump around a lot. What I mean is, within a paragraph it would describe nice things to see which were nowhere near each other in the city. Overall, I was pretty frustrated with this book. Of the hundreds of tourists carrying guide books around the city that weekend, I didn't notice anyone with this book. It just seems you have to invest too much time trying to figure out the best use of your time (I spent several hours reading the book in preparation for the trip.) I think the biggest shortcoming is the lack of pictures.



4. I purchased this in preparation for our upcoming trip to Rome. Upon review, it is exactly what we need.



5. I found the 36 pages of restaurant review invaluable, especially with the pricing guides and hours of opening and if booking in advance was necessary. The self-walk tours was also very helpful as we did not want to go on large guided tours. The section at the start on what you must and must not bring, what precautions to take, was also invaluable. I was pleased to get such a large map to do my planning, but disappointed that none of the major sights was displayed boldly so that I could see how to link up a certain few within a given day. Nor were any of the recommended restaurants marked on the map. It was a book essential to planning and plotting my trip, but the map was too big to bring and unfold in the middle of a busy street. I thought the shopping section very disappointing. It was all where to avoid, or make do with people-watching, on the grounds of extremely expensive, but no tips on where else one should try - except the early morning markets. It would have benefitted from more photos, even small black and white ones, as many of the recommended sights are not signposted in Rome, or else only in Italian. However, it was an absolute must have and gave me many insights and opportunities that I would not have found in other books claiming to be as good. I know that the next city I vist, whatever it may be, I will immediately get the Frommer's guide (to that city) without even looking for others. Finally, a few common phrases in Italian would have helped.

5 comments about The Dark Heart of Italy.

1. This is a cleverly constructed book of several parts and a few recurring motifs. Jones, a Welsh Methodist, Everton FC supporter, London hack and Oxford (Arts?) graduate, goes to live in Parma, Italy where his beloved has established herself. He divides his book into nine separate chapters and tries to weave them together as well as his excellent English and his motifs will allow. The first chapter discusses nuances of the Italian language and he uses those nuances to propound that Italy is a much more nuanced country than England and that its culture is infinitely more refined. An entire chapter brings the nuances of Italian culture to bear on football and he waxes very lyrical about the local youth and whatever immigrants are around playing ball as the sun goes down. The football allows us to place Italian village life in our minds and to empathize very much with it.
   The last chapter is an entire ode to Italy. It is written largely in the second person and it tells of "you" going through the village and everything there appealing to the aesthetic in "you". The English is beautiful and it achieves its purpose in making you close the book with a warm glow. Mission accomplished.
   The chapter on Italy's Catholic religion and its Protestant and other minorities could have done with much improvement. Italy's Catholicism is more complicated than the Padre Pio cult and the Protestants of the north surely have their faults as well. The chapter looks like it came from several previous publications he wrote.
   The politics chapters build on the hypothesis that the fascist and proto communist factions are still at war with each other and that politicians like Berlusconi exploit this for their own nefarious ends. He does a good job of tying the warring World War Two factions in with the protagonists and antagonists of later squabbles. He does not like Berlusconi and his polished prose does not quite hide this fact.
   My opinion of this book is that Jones sat down with his material and tied it all together into a very passable but rather superficial book which is nevertheless well worth the money being charged.



2. When I saw the title of this, at first I thought, "hatchet job". But even the introduction drew me right in. I love to travel, and it's always easy to think the grass is greener elsewhere. That's why now and then I like to get a more critical view of a place. It's easy to be seduced by a place as beautiful as Italy.
   
   This book does a beautiful job of presenting a portrait of Italian life. As an example, the byzantine process of buying a house there left me shaking my head. And the peculiar ways of the government and religious establishment are mind-boggling. Yet, he clearly loves it there, and points out the everyday beauty of life there very well.
   
   Somebody made a fairly sarcastic comment about how Jones thinks Italy is a beautiful place as long as you eliminate the people. To me, this person got it entirely backwards. If anything, Jones is saying that the people, the language, the artisan stores, the conversations, and the amateur football are beautiful, it's the government that ruins the situation, and guess who is at the helm? The guy who owns half the country. No conflict of interest there. But Jones even admits that there are things about Berlusconi that he does like. Of course, I'm sure that many readers can't tolerate a critical view of anything that they have personal feelings for, but that's another woeful topic entirely.
   
   I did bog down a bit in the descriptions of the many political scandals. There are so many of them that one would probably need a timeline or chart to keep them straight.
   
   The many stories of individual Italians are delightful. The very old lady at the football game hilariously stands out.
   
   I suppose he could have been less controversial by calling it something like The Complex Heart of Italy, but I can't blame him at all for having a bold title, and I think it's more effective. All in all, a great read!



3. The dimensions discussed are worth knowing about, or for one who has lived in Italy, worth remembering. All nations are complex. Italy being such a beautiful country one forgets that it has, like any other, a side to it that is not all milk and honey.



4. Tobias Jones's book highlights many important aspects of Italy, but ends up playing the same sterile game that most visiting English writers enjoy, which I will hereby describe in three steps:
   
   1: Italy is extremely enjoyable...
   2: ... but Italians are morally questionable and intrinsically fascist...
   3: ... whereas we Englishmen and Americans, in spite of our occasional roughness and lack of such luscious treasures of art and good life, are ultimately right.
   
   In the end, these books are not aimed at describing Italy, but at reinforcing the English-speaking reader's sense of righteousness and entitlement. Severgnini's "La bella figura" does exactly the same. No wonder they sell so well... Not in my name, not with my money...



5. Tobias Jones' "The Dark Heart of Italy" is an interesting read. I'd categorize it as a combination of two of my favorite books: Peter Robb's Midnight in Sicily and Alex Kerr's Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Modern Japan. I feel like the comparison to Kerr's book is the most appropriate one: here's a foreigner who sees the country with fresh eyes and uses that perspective to make trenchant, well-presented observations about his adopted place. Both Kerr and Jones love their adopted country but are left with a feeling wonderfully expressed by Jones when he says that Italy is "infuriating and endlessly irritating, but in the end it is almost impossible to leave. It's not that everything in Italy is 'troppo bello' ('too beautiful'), or that food or conversation are so good. It's that life seems less exciting outside of Italy, the emotions seem muted."
   
   There are good chapters on Italian television (Jones asks "why is it so bad?") and Italian politics. On the political front, he paints a complex picture of Silvio Berlusconi, calling the former Prime Minister "both fascinating and frightening."
   
   I really enjoyed the foreword of the book, which captures the reaction to the release of the hardcover edition (for this reason, I recommend you get the paperback). Jones notes that "overnight, I was catapulted from near-anonymity in Italy to being a household name." Then he shares some truly thrilling tales of encounters with and letters from Italians who took the time to read the book. As one letter states perfectly: "I have lived in Italy all my life. I love this country. It is obvious from reading your book that you do too. I write to express my gratitude to you because you have been very courageous. You have described...precisely what is happening in Italy in these terribly turbulent times."

No comments about 365 Days in Italy Calendar 2009 (Picture-A-Day Wall Calendars).

1 comments about Italia: The Art of Living Italian Style.

1. ITALIA: THE ART OF LIVING ITALIAN STYLE is a title that may be misleading. This is not a 'decorator's source book' (though it certainly is an indispensable resource of information for any designer of interiors or exteriors!): this is a book rich in the Italian ambience that marries a respect of history in all forms while providing some of the finest photographs of a wide vista of Italian towns and gardens and homes. It is unique in its approach and a most rewarding read as well as a picture tour through Italy.
   
   Edmund Howard utilizes the gifts of photographer Oliver Benn in partnering this leisurely journey through all parts of Italy.The writing and the visuals are equal in quality and when paired as they are here they are inimitable. Howard divides the book into chapters: 'Towns and Landscapes' surveys the various regions from the north (Venice) through Tuscany to the south with Rome and Sicily; 'Architecture' details the forms or buildings as they have developed through centuries; 'Interiors' span the humble with the grand; 'Gardens' are explored in all varieties. Then Howard and Benn swoop down on a chapter titled 'Details': here Doors and Windows, Frescoes, Fountains, Colors, Stonework, and Mosaics are scrutinized with word and image, a point where the reader gains more information about the Italian style than in any other source.
   
   Realizing that the book will seduce many to visit the land of all this beauty, the book closes with a 'Visitor's Guide' which succinctly outlines the most interesting places to see in all of the Italian and Sicilian towns, villages and cities surveyed in this book. This is a photographic feast and a completely entertaining and readable as well as informative book. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, January 06

1 comments about Streetwise Milan Map - Laminated City Street Map of Milan, Italy -with integrated metro map including lines and stations.

1. Streetwise gives me so many details that I don't need a personal guide. Just by carefully analyzing the map I could see many places that I wanted to visit. I'm an independent traveler and Streetwise is my tour guide!

3 comments about Suzy Gershman's Born to Shop New York: The Ultimate Guide for People Who Love to Shop (Born To Shop).

1. There is a problem with travel books in that they try to cover EVERYthing in a city. I like books that just tell me the best places to go for what I want.
   
   This book leans towards being a total reference, but offers the shopper plenty of options.
   
   The bargain shopper needs to know one thing - Century 21 next to the world trade center site. That is about where the unbelievable bargains end. Now you can save some money on the book and spend it on shopping
   
   One nicety about the book is that the author includes place to eat around the shopping.



2. The last edition of Born to Shop disappointed me becasue Suzy Gershman's interest seemed so narrow that the stores and places she liked were too far out of my range. In this edition she's made some changes. Cheap shopping is listed and the luxe, nowhere else except NYC stores are listed as well. She must have gotten some younger helpers because much to my delight the Sean Jean store and and Triple Five Soul shop are mentioned too. One thing I've always liked about the Born to Shop series is that the advice shows you how to get around town safely, how to buy quality and how to have a good time with as few hassles as possible. And don't think this book is just for women. In our last trip to NY my husband frequently consulted it and was very pleased with the directions and commentary.
   
   This book and Gerry Frank's guide are all you really need to take a weekend NYC trip.



3. I would love to be able to review this book, having just read Suzy's "C'est La Vie". However after a long conversation with a non English as a first language speaker, it was decided if I wanted the rest of my order I would have to forgo Born to Shop NY. Others, let me know if you were able to purchase this book and if it was helpful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1 comments about Autumn in Piemonte: Food and Travels in Italy's Northwest.

1. This intensely personal book on the Piemonte is a delight. It is a gorgeous pictorial survey of the entire region. The narrative brings a nice personal touch. And the recipes seem to be delicious. I plan on cooking several.
   
   The Piedmont is the one region north of Rome that we have not visited. I am already planning my next visit to Italy based on this book.

No comments about Moleskine City Notebook Roma (Rome) (Moleskine City Notebook).