AcademicsBooks about Italy
The first books that anyone going to Italy acquires are general tour guidebooks that list hotels, museums, and other essential travel information for the visitor to Italy. There are many to choose from. My favorites have been guides by Rick Steves,Frommer's, and Cadogan. Other popular ones are those in the Let's Go series, Fodor's, Insight guides, the Rough Guide, Baedaker's and Nelles guides. If you are traveling with several others, a good plan is to each purchase a different guide since hotel and youth hostel information and recommendations are often quite different from guidebook to guidebook.
The more you know about Italy before you go, the richer your experience there will be. In that spirit is the book list below.It is far from comprehensive. Please email me if you have an additions to this list to recommend. Thanks.
A Reading List of Books about Italy
- Berendt, John, The City of Falling Angels --- about Venice and the mid-1990s fire that destroyed La Fenice, the great Venetian opera house.
- Bryson, Bill, Neither Here nor There --- okay, it is about traveling through Europe, not just Italy, but it's so funny, it has to be on this list.
- Calgagno, Anne, ed., Italy: True Stories of Life on the Road --- terrific travel writing; one of the Travelers' Tales Guides series
- Cahill, Susan, ed. Desiring Italy --- excerpts and stories from women writers
- Culbertson, Judi and Tom Randall, Permanent Italians --- a guide to the cemeteries in Italy
- Dunant, Sarah, In the Company of the Courtesan --- a novel set in 16th century Rome and Venice.
- Harrison, Barbara Grizzuti, Italian Days
- Hofmann, Paul, That Fine Italian Hand
- King, Ross, Brunelleschi's Dome : How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture
- King, Ross, Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling
- Lamb, Richard, War in Italy, 1943-1945: A Brutal Story
- Levey, Michael, Florence: A Portrait
- Lintner, Valerio, A Traveller's History of Italy --- 2500 years of history in 250 pages
- Mayes, Frances, Under the Tuscan Sun --- the best seller about the author who buys and restores a house in Tuscany. A great read.
- McCarthy, Mary, The Stones of Florence
- Mewshaw, Michael, Playing Away: Roman Holidays and other Mediterranean Encounters
- Morris, Jan, The Venetian Empire: A Sea Voyage
- Murray, William, The Last Italian: Portrait of a People
- Newby, Eric, Love and War in the Apennines
- Origo, Iris, War in Val D'Orcia: An Italian War Diary 1943-1944 --- moving account of living in Tuscany and running a school/orphanage when the war comes to their turf. One of my favorites.
- Parks, Tim, Italian Neighbours --- a Brit's observations from a year in Verona
- Parks, Tim, An Italian Education --- more and richer insights from this Englishman
- Stone, Irving, The Agony and the Ecstasy --- my #1on this list; a wonderful biographical novel of Michelangelo that brings Renaissance Florence and Rome alive for the reader.
- Time-Life Books, Italy at War --- World War II history
