EyeItalia

Author Susan Van Allen presents an inspiring and personal travel guide for all women who dream of going to Italy, whether for the 1st time or the 10th time. Van Allen, a passionate Italophile and seasoned Italian traveler, suggests itineraries for every woman’s interests and comfort level.

Whether one’s passion is art, food, shopping or all of the above, you will find just the right suggestions in this marvelous book. Highly recommended by EyeItalia! To buy 100 Places Every Woman Should Go, click here.

A celebration of the language and culture of Italy, La Bella Lingua is the story of how a language shaped a nation, told against the backdrop of one woman’s personal quest to speak fluent Italian.

For anyone who has been to Italy, the fantasy of living the Italian life is powerfully seductive. But to truly become Italian, one must learn the language. This is how Dianne Hales began her journey. In La Bella Linguaa, she brings the story of her decades-long experience with the “the world’s most loved and lovable language” together with explorations of Italy’s history, literature, art, music, movies, lifestyle and food in a true opera amorosa—a labor of her love of Italy.

Throughout her first excursion in Italy—with “non parlo Italiano” as her only Italian phrase—Dianne delighted in the beauty of what she saw but craved comprehension of what she heard. And so she chose to inhabit the language. Over more than twenty-five years she has studied Italian in every way possible through Berlitz, books, CDs, podcasts, private tutorials and conversation groups, and, most importantly, large blocks of time in Italy. In the process she found that Italian became not just a passion and a pleasure, but a passport into Italy’s storia and its very soul. She offers charming insights into what it is that makes Italian the most emotionally expressive of languages, from how the “pronto” (“Ready!”) Italians say when they answer the telephone conveys a sense of something coming alive, to how even ordinary things such as a towel (asciugamano) or handkerchief (fazzoletto) sound better in Italian.

To buy La Bella Lingua, click here!

From the prestigious Lucca publishing house Maria Pacini Fazzi Editore, this beautiful book cleverly combines fine art and traditional Tuscan cookery. Containing 128 recipes and over 40 full-color still-life paintings from the Medici collections, this book will please any lover of Italian culture and cuisine. Whether enjoyed as an art book or used as a cookbook, this elegant volume belongs on every Italophile’s shelf. Available exclusively from EyeItalia! To read more and to buy, click here.

Edited by Alice Leccese Powers, Italy in Mind is a delightful literary potpourri, revealing Italy’s incomparable beauty and its many contradictions. Featuring essays, letters, novel excerpts, short stories and poems, Powers has chosen works from over 40 writers spanning two centuries – including Mark Twain, Lord Byron, Richard Wilbur, Michael Ondaatje, Calvin Trillin and Edith Wharton – all of whom have been charmed, seduced or perplexed by Italy and her inhabitants.  Appropriate for any traveler (whether real or armchair) desiring a greater understanding of  “la bella paese”, this book offers rich and marvelous perspectives from some of Britain’s and America’s greatest writers. To purchase Italy in Mind, go here.

What is it about Italy that inspires passion, fascination, and utter devotion? This quirky and delightful guide to the Italian way of life, written by two talented Italophiles, answers that question while entertaining both real and armchair travelers. Organized in fifty witty mini-essays on iconic Italian subjects, ranging from insulting hand gestures to patron saints, pasta, Parmesan, shoes, opera, the Vespa, the Ferrari, gelato, gondolas, and more. History, folklore, superstitions, traditions, and customs are tossed in a delicious sauce that also includes a wealth of factual information for the sophisticated traveler.

Beautifully designed and illustrated, this is a perfect gem of a book to give yourself and the Italy lovers in your life. Buy Italianissimo!

If you love the beautiful things offered on eyeItalia you will love this charming book, which showcases a marvelous selection of Italian artisans and their wares. The author, Laura Morelli, has traveled all over Italy in search of  authentic and precious objects that are lovingly and carefully produced by hand, and her love for Italy shines through on every page. This book is both marvelous armchair reading and a great travel resource to take on your next trip to bella Italia.  Buy Made in Italy!

A jewel of a cookbook, Il Talismano is to Italy what The Joy of Cooking is to America.  For over 50 years, The Talisman has been Italy’s most popular standard cookbook, containing hundreds of recipes from all regions of Italy, encompassing antipasti, soups, pasta, pizza, meat, seafood, contorni and desserts. This adapted edition has weights, measurements, instructions and ingredients for American usage.

Beloved and trusted by Italian cooks for decades, this cookbook-first published in 1950-contains scores of traditional recipes that Italians have been preparing for generations. There’s nothing trendy here; authenticity defines Il Talismano.

Whether you’re a novice or an accomplished  cook, The Talisman is one standard your cookbook library should not be without.  Buy The Talisman today!

A rich anthology of fiction, memoir and essays, Desiring Italy is both literature and traveler’s companion. Editor Susan Cahill has artfully collected pieces from 28 women writers–Mary McCarthy, George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Muriel Spark, Edith Wharton and Barbara Grizzuti Harrison among them–each with its own voice, perspective and subject, but all possessing a common thread: the allure, soul and sensuality of Italy. Whether Harrison’s reflections on Sicily or McCarthy’s musings on Tuscany, the perennial seductiveness and timeless beauty of Italy come alive in these pages.

Order Desiring Italy

Now that autumn’s in the air, it’s time to put the beach reads away and delve into a book that possesses intelligence, wit and piercing introspection.  Natalia Ginzburg’s A Place to Live is such a book.

Ginzburg is one of the greatest women writers you’ve probably never heard of. Though she was one of Italy’s most celebrated writers of the 20th century (Ginzburg died in 1991), she is far from a household name in the United States. According to the New York Times,  A Place to Live is " a glowing light of modern Italian literature…Ginzburg’s magic is the utter simplicity of her prose, suddenly illuminated by one word that makes a lightning stroke of a plain phrase…As direct and clean as if it were carved in stone, it yet speaks thoughts of the heart."

Lynne Sharon Schwartz, the accomplished American writer,  was both editor and translator of  the 21 essays collected in this volume, and her profound respect for Ginzburg’s talent shines through on every page.

For a rare reading pleasure and a book you will never forget, order A Place to Live. Highly recommended by eyeItalia.

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"In this consummate portrait of the Italian people, bestselling author, publisher, journalist and politician Luigi Barzini delves deeply into the Italian national character, discovering both its great qualities and its imperfections. Barzini is startlingly frank as he examines “the two Italies”: the one that created and nurtured such luminaries as Dante Alighieri, St. Thomas of Aquino and Leonardo da Vinci; the other, feeble and prone to catastrophe, backward in political action if not in thought, “invaded, ravaged, sacked, and humiliated in every century.” Deeply ambivalent, Barzini approaches his task with a combination of love, hate, disillusion, and affectionate paternalism, resulting in a completely original, thoughtful and probing picture of his countrymen."

—From the back cover

Buy The Italians