No comments about Flying Visits Croatia & the Adriatic (Flying Visits - Cadogan).

No comments about Painted Facades of Florence: XV-XIX Centuries.

5 comments about Dances with Luigi: A Grandson's Determined Quest to Comprehend Italy and the Italians.

1. I am an Italophile with southern italian roots. This book grabbed me by the throat. I couldn't put it down. He trudged through the northern Italian stereotypes of southerners, but then colorfully decribed wonderful, vital people, as he finds friends, countrymen, and then, finally family in the Southern Italian towns that his ancestors left so many years before. His story describes a combination of hard work, diligence and good fortune. A great read for anyone trying to find their roots, or who is interested in things Italian.



2. Nice story, sometimes too sloppy, the book could be cut down 70 or 90 pages, too redundant. I barely trust the find of Mr Paolicelli's grandfather birth record during his last days in Italy; too rushed the editing, many misspellings of Italian names. Needed a much better editor.



3. This book was one I found hard to put down. An accurate story about what it is like to visit Italian villages and mix with the locals.
   The author has a way of taking you along and making the scene come to life. I do wish he had included a family chart to help keep tract of the family members.
   I'll remember this book for years to come!



4. I was really pulling for this book because I'm going through the same experience, although more at my family's behest, of tracing my Italian ancestry. The first chapter or two show promise, and Paolicelli has a readible style. When his Italian friends insist he detour off the highway into a town whose name he suddenly remembers from his childhood, the resulting episode at the town hall is fascinating. But in the end the book just doesn't hang together very well. The story wanders off into too many dead ends. We read at first about his landlord and guide Luigi, who the book is named after, but that really isn't the focus of the story. And when it appears that the common thread between the author and his ancestors may be music, that theme doesn't get developed either. I could live with that, but the main problem with the lack of focus is with the ancestors themselves. No sooner do you begin to get a picture of one relative from the old country than he jumps to another of the dozen or so aunts, uncles, grandparents and great grandparents on both sides of his family that he's tracing. You'll need to chart his family tree to keep up.



5. When I picked up "Dances With Luigi", I thought the author would put into writing thoughts that I, as a third generation Italian American would relate to in some wonderfully metaphysical way. I was disappointed.
   
   Firstly, the title has nothing to do with the actual theme of the author's journey. I suppose Mr. Paolicelli intended to interperse his musings with his Umbrian landlord, Luigi, as chapter endings, to further enlighten his findings about his family, and the Italians of the Mezzogiorno region of Italy. But, these revelations do not occur consistently enough to warrant the honor of a title. Luigi, a man living through his own tragedy, merely comes along for the ride and acts only, at times, as Paolicelli's sounding board. I believe that Mr. Paolicelli, as a television journalist, intended to follow New Yorker magazine's Adam Gopnik lead in his 'Paris to the Moon' essays that eventually formulated a bestselling book. This would account for some of the redundance in descriptions and events from chapter to chapter that as individual essays would need the refreshment of repeated explanation.
   
   However, this observation is minor. My main problem with 'Dances With Luigi' is that it succeeds only in telling the story of one specific grandson searching for his grandfather's records; it fails in becoming universally emblematic for all the rest of the third and fourth generation Italian Americans in America who know nothing about their roots in Italy. Paolicelli is lucky that he knew anything about his grandfather's life in Italy; many of us were told nothing. The southern Italians wanting nothing more than freedom from the oppression of the Risorgimento government and the prejudice of the Northern Italians. They wanted a better life and chose a strange place with unfamiliar sights and sounds, in spite of their immense sense of family and tradition, over the repression they knew in their homeland. Paolicelli touches on this a little when he talks about his grandfather's obsession with the needs of his children rather than those of himself. For that generation, as in all other founding American generations, the past was over, the present endured and the future awaited.
   
   I am pleased that Mr. Paolicelli found his grandfather's records, but more so that he found a sense of his future----a future that he speaks of only when he describes his musical triumphs and more concretely in a very small epilogue. I sense he finally understands the unselfishness of these strong people of America's past.
   
   I would have rather heard more about how Paolicelli realized his grandfather's dream, rather than the goings on in a homeland that our grandparents wanted to forget. Perhaps more of the reasons why his family specifically left Italy would have been revealing. The book should have been called Francesco's Gift in honor of his grandfather, who gave him a name, a life without stuggle and a dream for the future.
   

   Nevertheless, I will recommend the book to all Italian Americans that have that itch for understanding.

1 comments about Sta. Maria del Popolo: Audio Guide to Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome and its Remarkable Art Treasures (Jane's Smart Art Guides).

1. One of Rome's lesser known but truly outstanding cultural and artistic icons are wonderfully showcased and informative presented in "Jane's Smart Art Guide To Sta. Maria Del Popolo In Rome", a two CD disk audiobook that has a total running time of 1 hour, 55 minutes (consisting of an 18 minute pre-visit and a 97 minute on-site excursion) and guides the listener through a remarkable church with its modest early Renaissance facade masking an interior adorned with an wealth of Italian art treasures and rare architectural features that includes the first Renaissance dome, the last Baroque tomb, as well as works by such celebrated artists as Algardi, Bernini, Bramante, Bregno, Caravaggio, Pinturicchio, Raphael, and others. This audiobook format is ideal for the `armchair traveler' and a simply wonderful `hands free' guide for on-site visitors as the narration covers details far beyond the `highlights only' superficiality of many ordinary guidebooks. Thoroughly researched and expertly produced, as well as enhanced with the inclusion of an 8-page booklet including the track list, floor plan, a glossary, tips, and twelve photographic images, "Jane's Smart Art Guide To Sta. Maria Del Popolo In Rome" is nicely paced, well organized, and thoroughly `user friendly'. Also very highly recommended are the companion audiobook guides: "Jane's Smart Art Guide To St. Peter's Basilica In Rome And Its Remarkable Art Treasures" and "Jane's Smart Art Guide To Our Lady Cathedral In Antwerp And its Remarkable Art Treasures".

3 comments about Permanent Italians: An Illustrated Guide to the Cemeteries of Italy (The Permanent Series).

1. liberal gardim/pascoa amet



2. Another fine addition to Culbertson and Randall's series of cemetery guides, this volume covers sixteen sites in Rome (including the Pantheon, St. Peter's Basilica and the Protestant Cemetery) and its environs, Umbria and Tuscany, Florence (including Santa Croce, the English Cemetery and the Duomo), Emilia-Romagna (Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, Predappio and Rimini), Northern regions (including Milan and Padua), and Venice (including the cemetery island of San Michele).

   This is an invaluabe guide for travel in Italy. There are directions for getting to each site, maps of the cemeteries, and many photographs. There is a good bibliography and a complete index.




3. Going to Italy? Be sure to check out "Permanent Italians".
   
   Delightful writing. Information packed. Great guide to take along to Italy to learn about another aspect of Italy.

No comments about The Report of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest; Including Special Reports: The Killings at Jackson State, the Kent State Tragedy. (Physician travelers).

No comments about Florence and Tuscany (Eyewitness Travel Guide).

No comments about Memoirs of Hector Berlioz, from 1803 to 1865, comprising his travels in Germany, Italy, Russia, and England..

No comments about Ismail Merchant's Florence: Filming and Feasting in Tuscany/70 Recipes.

1 comments about Montaigne's Travel Journal.

1. 
   In September 1580, Montaigne set out for Rome by way of Austria and Switzerland for what would end up being a 17-month trip. The same intelligence, objectivity and goodwill that characterize his famous Essays appear in this travel journal as well, making it a joy to read. An excerpt:
   
   "On the eve of Easter I saw at Saint John Lateran the heads of Saint Paul and Saint Peter that are shown there, which still have their flesh, color, and beard, as if they were alive: Saint Peter, a white and slightly longish face, his color ruddy and inclined to the sanguine, a forked gray beard, his head covered with a papal miter; Saint Paul, dark, his face broad and stouter, the head bigger, the beard gray, thick. They are up high in a special place. The way of showing them is that they call the people by the sound of bells, and by fits and starts lower a curtain be-hind which are these heads, side by side. They Iet them be seen for the time it takes to say an Ave Maria, and immediately raise the curtain again; after that they lower it again in the same way, and this up to three times. They repeat this exhibition four or five times during the day. The place is about as high as a pike, and then there is a heavy iron grill through which you look. They light several tapers around it on the out-side; but it is hard to discern very clearly all the details. I saw them two or three times. The polish of these faces had some resemblance to our masks." (p. 95)
   
   The heads are still in the church; unfortunately they are no longer displayed publicly.
   
   North Point Press' books are wonderful examples of the bookmaker's art, but the company went out of business quite a while ago. Be sure to buy their edition if you can find one. The Foreword by Guy Davenport and Introduction by Donald M. Frame are icing on the cake.