History and Culture in Italy

Rating:
Summary: Italian history and culture affecting modern societies
Review: The author does a good job keeping the reader very interested with his wide-ranging stories about Italian architecture and his own personal stories while he lived in Rome for many years as a Cornell overseas graduate student.

He stated many times that he loved best living in Rome; but he also kept reminding his readers that good jobs are hard to find in Italy for any outsider. So he knew his good life would end someday and his sadness came through his many stories that followed as he traveled throughout Italy and many other parts of Europe. (Note, I found out the same phenomenon of that only a few good jobs available to outsiders while I visited my family in Italy in 2001. So I too know firsthand that the author is telling the big, but often unspoken truth, on difficulty in finding good jobs in Italy and perhaps in other parts of Europe, as well.)

Overall, I think, if the author had added some travel maps and some sketches of his art and architecture that he visited and often described, it would've been a bit more memorable for the average reader to relate to in this arcane subject of Italian Renaissance Art and Architecture.

The author initial prefatory big claim is that "exploration of history and culture in Italy is an exploration of modern identity, in terms of language, institutions, self-consciousness, and self-expression." I think the author is on to something here with his claim.

Finally, the author consciously chooses in presenting the information by subject rather than by other ways, such as chronologically, may be called into some question, because at times, it's hard to follow where the author is going next in his fast-paced travel schedule. This guy covers a lot of territory and without a decent map in the text it is almost impossible to really know where the heck he is going to next.

Thus a little more thought should be given to how best to present all the data and information he had gathered for so many years while living and traveling in Italy, Poland, Greece and beyond.

Gerard J. Sagliocca, P.E.

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