Sicilian Visitors: Volume 1 - History


Book Description

This book covers Sicilian history in terms of Sicilians and Sicilian immigrants as well as visitors to the island. It considers the Napoleonic Wars, World War II, immigration, slavery and piracy and epidemics and disasters, religious history as well as regular history.




Midnight In Sicily


Book Description

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year From the author of M and A Death in Brazil comes Midnight in Sicily. South of mainland Italy lies the island of Sicily, home to an ancient culture that--with its stark landscapes, glorious coastlines, and extraordinary treasure troves of art and archeology--has seduced travelers for centuries. But at the heart of the island's rare beauty is a network of violence and corruption that reaches into every corner of Sicilian life: Cosa Nostra, the Mafia. Peter Robb lived in southern Italy for over fourteen years and recounts its sensuous pleasures, its literature, politics, art, and crimes.




Sicily


Book Description

“Reading these guides is the next best thing to actually going there with them in hand.” —Foreword Magazine AN ENGAGING INTRODUCTION TO A CULTURAL GIANT Long before it became an Italian offshore island, Sicily was the land in the center of the Mediterranean where the great civilizations of Europe and Northern Africa met. Sicily today is familiar and unfamiliar, modernized and unchanging. Visitors will find in an out-of-the-way town an Aragonese castle, will stumble across a Norman church by the side of a lesser travelled road, will see red Muslim-styles domes over a Christian shrine, will find a Baroque church of breathtaking beauty in a village, will catch a glimpse from the motorway of a solitary Greek temple on the horizon and will happen on a the celebrations of the patron saint of a run-down district of a city, and will stop and wonder. There is more to Sicily than the Godfather and the mafia.




Sicilian Roots


Book Description

A beautiful book for anyone interested in learning about and enjoying the history of Sicily.Sicily's rich history comes alive in this illustrated guide, sponsored by the "Associazione Hands-On Sicily," written for people who want to learn more about the largest island in the Mediterranean. Learn about the thirteen cultures who have dominated Sicily over its 5,000-year history. Relive the island's Golden Ages and tumultuous periods. Marvel at its innovations. Cry at its defeats. See which leaders were far ahead of their time--uniting the diverse island populations. Discover which invaders brought new ingredients to Sicilian cuisine. Be surprised to learn that pasta was originally a dish for the rich! Find out why tomatoes were once considered poisonous... and how Italians were the first to enjoy cooking with them. Learn when the first pizza was made (and for whom). Sicily is an amazing island with a history that is guaranteed to fascinate people of all ages. :-)




Sicilian Visitors Volume 2 - Culture


Book Description

Sicilian Visitors Vol 2 - Culture focuses on a wide range of cultural aspects of the island of Sicily including religion, literature, art, music, science, sports, food as well describing visitors who have come to the island and their impressions. Vol.2 is the companion of Vol 1 which describes the island ́s history.




Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia


Book Description

The Italian-American mafia has its roots in a mysterious and powerful criminal network in Sicily. While the mythology of the mafia has been widely celebrated in American culture, the true origins of its rituals, laws, and methods have never actually been revealed. John Dickie uses startling new research to expose the secrets of the Sicilian mafia, providing a fascinating account that is more violent, frightening, and darkly comic than anything conceived in popular movies and novels. How did the Sicilian mafia begin? How did it achieve its powerful grip in Italy and America? How does it operate today? From the mafia's origins in the 1860s to its current tense relationship with the Berlusconi government, Cosa Nostra takes us to the inner sanctum where few have dared to go before. This is an important work of history and a revelation for anyone who ever wondered what it means to be "made" in the mob.




Sicilian Carousel


Book Description

A moving account of friendship and discovery on the island of Sicily from the acclaimed travel writer and bestselling author of The Alexandria Quartet. Despite decades spent writing poetic evocations of the timeless pleasures of life in the Mediterranean, Lawrence Durrell had never set foot on the sea’s largest island: mysterious, impenetrable Sicily. For years his friend Martine begged him to visit her on this sun-kissed paradise, and though he always intended to, life inevitably interfered. It took Martine’s sudden death to finally bring him to the island’s shores. With Martine’s letters in his pocket, Durrell signs up for a tour group, hoping to learn the travel habits of those who aren’t obsessively devoted to island life. As he treks from sight to sight, dizzy with history and culture, Durrell finds echoes of his past lives in Rhodes, Cyprus, and Corfu.




DK Eyewitness Sicily


Book Description

Visit and explore Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and stop by Valle dei Templi, hike Mount Etna, and eat authentic caponata. Discover DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Sicily. • Detailed itineraries and "don't-miss" destination highlights at a glance. • Illustrated cutaway 3-D drawings of important sights. • Floor plans and guided visitor information for major museums. • Guided walking tours, local drink and dining specialties to try, things to do, and places to eat, drink, and shop by area. • Area maps marked with sights. • Detailed city maps include street finder indexes for easy navigation. • Insights into history and culture to help you understand the stories behind the sights. • Hotel and restaurant listings highlight DK Choice special recommendations. With hundreds of full-color photographs, hand-drawn illustrations, and custom maps that illuminate every page, DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Sicily truly shows you the country as no one else can. Recommended: For a pocket guidebook to Sicily, check out DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Top 10 Sicily, which is packed with dozens of top 10 lists, ensuring you make the most of your time and experience the best of everything. Series Overview: For more than two decades, DK Eyewitness Travel Guides have helped travelers experience the world through the history, art, architecture, and culture of their destinations. Expert travel writers and researchers provide independent editorial advice, recommendations, and reviews. With guidebooks to hundreds of places around the globe available in print and digital formats, DK Eyewitness Travel Guides show travelers how they can discover more. DK Eyewitness Travel Guides: the most maps, photographs, and illustrations of any guide. Visit TravelDK.com to learn more.




Sicilian Odyssey


Book Description

A blending of art and cultural criticism, travel writing, and personal narrative, Sicilian Odyssey is Francine Prose's imaginative consideration of the diverse cultural legacies found juxtaposed and entangled on the Mediterranean island of Sicily. She writes of the intensity of Sicily, the "commitment to the extreme," where the history is more colorful, the sun hotter, the cooking earthier, the violence more horrific, the carnival more raucous, the politics more Byzantine than other places on Earth, and how much the island can teach us about the triumph of beauty over violence and life over death. Prose examines architectural sites and objects and looks at the ways in which myth and actuality converge. Exploring the intact and beautiful Greek amphitheaters at Siracusa and Taormina, the cathedral at Monreale, the Roman mosaics at Piazza Armerina, and some of the masterpieces of the Baroque scattered throughout the island, Prose focuses her keen insight to imagine them in their own time, to examine the evolution and decline of the cultures that produced them, and to deconstruct powerful responses each evokes in her.




The World of Sicilian Wine


Book Description

The World of Sicilian Wine provides wine lovers with a comprehensive understanding of Sicilian wine, from its ancient roots to its modern evolution. Offering a guide and map to exploring Sicily, Bill Nesto, an expert in Italian wine, and Frances Di Savino, a student of Italian culture, deliver a substantive appreciation of a vibrant wine region that is one of Europe’s most historic areas and a place where many cultures intersect. From the earliest Greek and Phoenician settlers who colonized the island in the eighth century B.C., the culture of wine has flourished in Sicily. A parade of foreign rulers was similarly drawn to Sicily’s fertile land, sun-filled climate, and strategic position in the Mediterranean. The modern Sicilian quality wine industry was reborn in the 1980s and 1990s with the arrival of wines made with established international varieties and state-of-the-art enology. Sicily is only now rediscovering the quality of its indigenous grape varieties, such as Nero d’Avola, Nerello Mascalese, Frappato, Grillo, and distinctive terroirs such as the slopes of Mount Etna.