The Italian Party


Book Description

One of the Wall Street Journal's "Six More Books to Read This Winter" • "Required Reading,"The New York Post• Library Journal's "Spring/Summer Bests" of 2018 •A Sonoma Index-Tribune Bestseller •One of CrimeReads' "Debuts to Discover Spring 2018" "Deeply funny." —The New York Times Book Review podcast "[A] sweltering thriller set against the backdrop of what is probably your dream getaway destination: Tuscany." —Bustle "Tremendous fun! Wives with big secrets, husbands with bigger ones, swirling around a 1950s Siena teeming with seduction and spycraft." —Chris Pavone, New York Times bestselling author of The Travelers "Seeing the "antiquated" culture of postwar/Cold War Italy through the eyes of Americans, obsessed with modern convenience and progress, sort of mirrors my Italy to America transition in a fun way—plus there are spies! Affairs! and lot of food!!" —Giada De Laurentiis "Imagine Beautiful Ruins plus horses; Toujours Provence with spies, a mystery and sex. The Italian Party is a fizzy, page-turning delight that begs for a Campari and soda!" —Julia Claiborne Johnson, author of Be Frank With Me “I’ve always wanted to take a trip to Italy in the 1950’s and The Italian Party is my ticket. Like the best Italian paintings, this smart and funny book deftly combines the light and the dark. Christina Lynch’s prose pairs well with any hearty Tuscan red.” —Conan O'Brien Newly married, Scottie and Michael are seduced by Tuscany's famous beauty. But the secrets they are keeping from each other force them beneath the splendid surface to a more complex view of ltaly, America and each other. When Scottie’s Italian teacher—a teenager with secrets of his own—disappears, her search for him leads her to discover other, darker truths about herself, her husband and her country. Michael’s dedication to saving the world from communism crumbles as he begins to see that he is a pawn in a much different game. Driven apart by lies, Michael and Scottie must find their way through a maze of history, memory, hate and love to a new kind of complicated truth. Half glamorous fun, half an examination of America's role in the world, and filled with sun-dappled pasta lunches, prosecco, charming spies and horse racing, The Italian Party is a smart pleasure.




The Nature of the Italian Party System


Book Description

This study, first published in 1981, focuses on a single region of Italy – Tuscany, and examines the internal and external relationships of the parties, their evolution and their roles in the years 1975-1980. Looking in depth and detail at the activity of the parties in Tuscany, the book identifies and examines different factors of change and continuity and comes to the conclusion that there has been significant movement in the political positions and strengths of the respective parties as well as in their strategic courses and inter-relationships. This volume has a particular importance due to the questioning of many previously held assumptions of the country’s party system in the light of political and socio-economic change during the 1970’s. This title will be of interest to students of European politics.




The Italian Party


Book Description

"Newly married [in 1956], Scottie and Michael are seduced by Tuscany's famous beauty. But the secrets they are keeping from each other force them beneath the splendid surface to a more complex view of Italy, America, and each other. When Scottie's Italian teacher--a teenager with secrets of his own--disappears, her search for him leads her to discover other, darker truths about herself, her husband, and her country. Michael's dedication to saving the world from communism crumbles as he begins to see that he is a pawn in a much different game"--Amazon.com.







A House Party in Tuscany


Book Description

Art meets food in this celebratory story of family and friends in Tuscany at the Arniano Painting School. Few farmhouses in Tuscany are as magical as Arniano. Bought and restored in the 1980s by an English couple, this 18th-century ruin, surrounded by staggering beauty as far as the eye can see, became synonymous with delicious food and sparkling company. At Arniano, their daughter, Amber Guinness, found a passion for cooking and established The Arniano Painting School with cofounder William Roper Curzon. A marriage of food and art, the school celebrates Amber’s cooking and hosting skills and William’s talents for imparting his knowledge and passion for painting. Showcasing inviting and lush photography of the farmhouse’s interiors and exteriors alongside mouthwatering images of simple and flavorful dishes, A House Party in Tuscany collects recipes from 30 years of cooking and hosting at Arniano, exemplifying fundamental principles of Italian home cooking. With essential ingredients for an Italian pantry; feast curation; menu suggestions for every season; notes on Italian wines; day trips from Arniano; tricks and rules for cooking that can be applied to any lunch or dinner party, whatever the season; guidelines to seemingly effortless cooking and hosting, this is a book to make everyone feel welcome.




First They Took Rome


Book Description

Italy’s political disaster under a microscope There is little that hasn’t gone wrong for Italy in the last three decades. Economic growth has flatlined, infrastructure has crumbled, and out-of-work youth find their futures stuck on hold. These woes have been reflected in the country’s politics, from Silvio Berlusconi’s scandals to the rise of the far right. Many commentators blame Italy’s malaise on cultural ills—pointing to the corruption of public life or a supposedly endemic backwardness. In this reading, Italy has failed to converge with the neoliberal reforms mounted by other European countries, leaving it to trail behind the rest of the world. First They Took Rome offers a different perspective: Italy isn’t failing to keep up with its international peers but farther along the same path of decline they are following. In the 1980s, Italy boasted the West’s strongest Communist Party; today, social solidarity is collapsing, working people feel ever more atomized, and democratic institutions grow increasingly hollow. Studying the rise of forces like Matteo Salvini’s Lega, this book shows how the populist right drew on a deep well of social despair, ignored by the liberal centre. Italy’s recent history is a warning from the future—the story of a collapse of public life that risks spreading across the West.




The Oxford Handbook of Italian Politics


Book Description

The Oxford Handbook of Italian Politics provides a comprehensive look at the political life of one of Europe's most exciting and turbulent democracies. Under the hegemonic influence of Christian Democracy in the early post-World War II decades, Italy went through a period of rapid growth and political transformation. In part this resulted in tumult and a crisis of governability; however, it also gave rise to innovation in the form of Eurocommunism and new forms of political accommodation. The great strength of Italy lay in its constitution; its great weakness lay in certain legacies of the past. Organized crime--popularly but not exclusively associated with the mafia--is one example. A self-contained and well entrenched 'caste' of political and economic elites is another. These weaknesses became apparent in the breakdown of political order in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This ushered in a combination of populist political mobilization and experimentation with electoral systems design, and the result has been more evolutionary than transformative. Italian politics today is different from what it was during the immediate post-World War II period, but it still shows many of the influences of the past.




The Tailor of Ulm


Book Description

Twenty years have passed since the Italian Communists’ last Congress in 1991, in which the death of their party was decreed. It was a deliberate death, accelerated by the desire for a “new beginning.” That new beginning never came, and the world lost an invaluable, complex political, organizational and theoretical heritage. In this detailed and probing work, Lucio Magri, one of the towering intellectual figures of the Italian Left, assesses the causes for the demise of what was once one of the most powerful and vibrant communist parties of the West. The PCI marked almost a century of Italian history, from its founding in 1921 to the partisan resistance, the turning point of Salerno in 1944 to the de-Stalinization of 1956, the long ’68 to the “historic compromise,” and to the opportunity—missed forever—of democratic transformation. With rigor and passion, The Tailor of Ulm merges an original and enlightening interpretation of Italian communism with the experience of a militant “heretic” into a riveting read—capable of broadening our insights into contemporary Italy, and the twentieth-century communist experience.




Benevolence and Betrayal


Book Description

This history of Italy's Jews under the shadow of the Holocaust examines the lives of five Jewish families: the Ovazzas, who propered under Mussolini and whose patriarch became a prominent fascist; the Foas, whose children included both an antifascist activist and a Fascist Party member, the DiVerolis who struggled for survival in the ghetto; the Teglios, one of whom worked with the Catholic Church to save hundreds of Jews; and the Schonheits, who were sent to Buchenwald and Ravensbruck.




Aperitivo


Book Description

Kick off the evening as the Italians do, with these recipes for drinks and small dishes from the best bars and restaurants of Venice, Milan, Turin, and beyond. Aperitivo takes the reader on a spirited ride through this cocktail culture, covering variations on all the classics including the Negroni, the Bellini, and the spritz and stopping at the chicest bars that have elevated this ritual to an art form. Many of the drinks are structured around vermouths and other botanical-infused liqueurs, which offer a new world of complex flavors. They yield enticingly simple cocktails that refresh—without stunning the palate (thanks to a lighter alcohol content). But Aperitivo is just as much about the food because in Italy, drinking and eating go hand in hand. Recipes feature fried sage leaves, oven-roasted eggplant, and carbonara tramezzini, as well as many delicious riffs on crostini, frittata, and focaccia. Whether planning a party or just having a friend over for a quick drink, Aperitivo brings a whole new spirit of conviviality and true Italian style to the occasion.