Italian Pleasures

A gem of a book, illustrated delightfully and with short excerpts form the authors' favourite writers, inclding Mary McCarthy, D.H. Lawrence, Carlo Levi and Edith Wharton -- all waxing lyrical on Italy and its beauties.This evocative little book -- pocket sized, but elegantly bound for travelling with you everywhere whilst in Bella Italia -- contains personal essays by expatriates (they live in Rome, naturally!) David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell. They variously describe the multiple delights of this peninsula, rendering the joys and surprises of their adopted homeland, including iced cappuccino, umbrella pines on the Riviera, the expressive nuances of language, window shopping, the many pictoresque names and shapes of healthy pasta, sidewalk art made of flowers.If you love Italy, this book will caress and enhance your Italian tastes. If you still have to discover Italy's pleasures, then this book will be the right chaperon.As Goethe said in his 'Letter from Naples': "...it is a strange sensation for me to keep company with people who live only for pleasure."

I am very sorry to learn that this small, beautifully put togetherbook is out of print. If you have ever vacationed in or worked in orsimply visited Italy or if you have dreamed about doing it, you'llwant to, somehow, find this book. Leavitt and Mitchell have collectedfamous writers thoughts on Italy (D.H. Lawrence, Nellie Melba, JohnRuskin, Mark Twain, etc.) and then written down their own wonderfulmusings: (What makes an Italian ragu?, The thing that Italian boys dobetter than any other boys in the world, Is there a cure for chickenpox?, Speaking "opera" Italian, et al).This is a charming & fascinating book which ... is definitely not an ordinary Travelbook. This is a book about living in Italy and loving and relishingevery moment and sharing those moments with us. I hope ChronicleBooks is smart and generous enough to reprint it or, perhaps, publisha paperback edition.