Book Review

by Mark Peterson Harvard University Press, 338 pp., $28.95 PETER LIEBERMAN Very often it takes the work of an outsider, with a fresh pair of eyes, to make an original contribution to any academic field—especially a field such as Italian Studies, whose...

by Douglas Biow Stanford University Press, 246 pp., $19.95 DAN TURELLO The ideals of grace and ease were ones that came to find great success and cultural currency during the Renaissance, in great measure thanks to the writing of Baldassarre Castiglione’s...

by Antonio Prete Bollati Boringhieri, 131 pp., € 16.00 JULIANNE VAN WAGENEN Antonio Prete, professor of comparative literature at the University of Siena, begins his book: “To translate is to transmute one language into another language. One text into...

by Antonella Russo Einaudi, 428 pp., ill., € 35.00 CECELIA OLIVERIO Though the mere reference to the term “cultural history” is sometimes enough to push even the most tolerant of history buffs toward an apoplectic anxiety, fear not Antonella Russo’s ever...

by Svetlana Boym Basic Books, 404 pp., $22.00 CHRISTOPHER BROWN - Riddles for Longing “Somewhere on the frontier, the ghost of Dostoevsky meets the ghost of Mickey Mouse. Like the characters from The Possessed, they exchange wry smiles.” Thus concludes...

by Letizia Modena Routledge, 267 pp., $146.00 ($99.75 ebook) DAN TURELLO “If you choose to believe me, good. Now I will tell you how Octavia, the spider-web city, is made. There is a precipice between two steep mountains: the city is over the void, bound...

by Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Adam Michaels Princeton Architectural Press, 216 pp., $19.95 JOHN WELSH - The Message of the Book By dawn’s early light a young couple neck on Avenue A in New York’s lower East Side. In her left hand she holds a paperback copy of...

by Éric Marty Seuil, 335 pp., 23.30 € JOHN D'AMICO - « Images » de Roland Barthes Roland Barthes, le métier d’écrire, paru en 2006 aux Éditions du Seuil, est qualifié d’« essai », genre assez vague pour permettre à son auteur, Éric Marty, d’englober sous...

by Andrea Camilleri Sellerio, 271 pp., € 14.00 (€ 10.00 ebook) ELGIN KIRSTEN ECKERT Montalbano suffers from extreme loneliness. Long gone are the days in which he welcomed the peace and quiet of his beachfront home and reveled in the solitude of evening...

di Franca D'Agostini Bollati Boringhieri, 133 pp., 9.00 € DALILA COLUCCI - Per un'eudemonia della verità “C’è una teoria della verità di cui bisogna dare conto, ed è quella lanciata da Nietzsche negli ultimi decenni dell’Ottocento, e che ha avuto una...