My Two Italies A Personal and Cultural History [Paperback]

A charming, informative personal history that blends the anecdotal, historical, and downright unusual

The child of Italian immigrants and an award-winning scholar of Italian literature, Joseph Luzzi straddles these two perspectives inMy Two Italiesto link his family's dramatic story to Italy's north-south divide, its quest for a unifying language, and its passion for art, food, and family.
From his Calabrian father's time as a military internee in Nazi Germanywhere he had a love affair with a local Bavarian womanto his adventures amid the Renaissance splendor of Florence, Luzzi creates a deeply personal portrait of Italy that leaps past facile clich?s about Mafia madness and Tuscan sun therapy. He delves instead into why Italian Americans have such a complicated relationship with the old country, and how Italy produces some of the world's most astonishing art while suffering from corruption, political fragmentation, and an enfeebled civil society.
With topics ranging from the pervasive force of Dante's poetry to the meteoric rise of Silvio Berlusconi, Luzzi presents the Italians in all their glory and squalor, relating the problems that plague Italy today to the country's ancient roots. He shares how his two Italies the earthy southern Italian world of his immigrant childhood and the refined northern Italian realm of his professional lifejoin and clash in unexpected ways that continue to enchant the many millions who are either connected to Italy by ancestry or bound to it by love.

Joseph Luzziis the author ofRomantic Europe and the Ghost of Italy, which won the Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies from the Modern Language Association. His writing has appeared inThe New York Times, theLos Angeles Times,Bookforum, andThe Times Literary Supplement. He has received an essay award from the Dante Society of America, a teaching prize from Yale College, and a fellowship from the National Endowml3¬