Edited and introduced by Carlo G. Lacaita and Filippo Sabetti
Translation by David Gibbons

Carlo Cattaneo (1801-1869) was widely regarded by his contemporaries as a gifted public intellectual and a leading figure in the republican, democratic current of the Italian Risorgimento. Following the collapse of the 1848 revolts, he took refuge and settled in Switzerland, where he is now regarded as one of Canton Ticino's outstanding nineteenth century figures. He has been hailed variously as "the most profound and versatile intellectual of all the Italian Risorgimento," "the only self-conscious theorist of liberalism in nineteenth-century Italy," "a committed comparativist," and even "the last of the great Encyclopedists, the universal scholar."

From the 1820s to his death, Cattaneo dedicated himself to many theoretical and practical problems of his day. His writings span the fields of economics, history, politics, philosophy, and law, and address topics as diverse as the nature of chemistry, the construction of railways and the study of language and literature. This anthology, which was originally published in Italian in 1922, contains a selection of these writings chosen by the historian and political theorist Gaetano Salvemini, a fierce critic of fascism who was active in organizing the Resistance during his exile in the United States in the 1930s.

These essays constitute perhaps the best introduction to Cattaneo, for they show not only the range of his interests, but also the skill, thoughtfulness and sensitivity he brought to his subjects. At the same time, these disparate writings form a fairly consistent treatise, rendering the volume much larger than the sum of its parts. For it is Cattaneo's great merit to have seldom lost sight of the need to understand how people try to make sense of their world and the possibilities available to advance human progress. In brief, Cattaneo's aim was never just to inform his readers, but to move them to act.

It was this emphasis on action that led to Salvemini's interest in Cattaneo as Mussolini's fascist movement stood at the threshold of power. This collection of essays is thus as much a testament to Cattaneo's enduring legacy as it is a measure of Salvemini's foresight and his commitment to extend a tradition of thought that could serve as a civic philosophy. For as the dark and ominous clouds of fascism loomed on Italy's cultural and political horizon, Salvemini clearly saw how vitally important Cattaneo's enlightened philosophy could be to the public life of democracy.

227 pp
ISBN 0802092055 60.00 US
plus S&H


Foreword by Michele Scicolone
Introduction by Luigi Ballerini
Translation by Murtha Baca and
Stephen Sartarelli
Watercolors by Giuliano Della Casa

>More than a collection of recipes, Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well, first published in Florence in 1891, is a literary classic as well as a classic in the art of Italian cooking. Artusi is an urbane and witty narrator who speaks directly to his readers and provides a wealth of stories and anecdotes that constitute a valuable study of domestic Italian history and folklore.

Born in Emilia-Romagna in 1820, Pellegrino Artusi is the most famous gastronome that Italy has ever produced. He turned to the culinary arts at age 50, after having assembled a fortune as a banker in the city of Florence.

"Whatever else they may be, his pages read like a humorous collection of practical, naïve, and sometimes blasphemous remarks. They are a meticulous compilation of culinary rules, means, and advice, tickled and bedazzled by a panoply of anecdotes and commentaries drawn from history and myth as well as mildly encyclopedic samples of zoological and botanical information. If not a perfect admixture, they form a decidedly irresistible cocktail."
—Luigi Ballerini from his introduction

Translation by Murtha Baca

Six of the best short stories of the Italian Quattrocento—including a rare gem by Lorenzo de Medici—are collected here by scholar Lauro Martines and accompanied by six lively essays which provide a gateway into the real, historical world of the Italian Renaissance.

"Martines has managed to paint a lively and fascinating fresco of fifteenth-century Florence, the city of great artists who were among the most innovative of their era, but also the most garrulous and frolicsome... Rightly so, Martines concludes his collection with the exhilarant story of 'The Fat Woodcarver' in which Brunelleschi and Donatello play a sensational trick against the background of their Florentine workshops... They gradually persuade the Woodcarver that he is someone else—a certain Matteo—and lead him to be put in jail as Matteo... This tale of split personality has been described as a Renaissance precursor—with more humor, but also more anxiety, to it—of Pirandello. One could, moreover, think of Calvino and Landolfi, or even, since we are in America, of Hitchcock."
—Vittore Branca

Foreword by Alberto Moravia
Introduction by Margaret Rosenthal
Translation by Raymond Rosenthal

The first erotic book in the Christian world to be written in the vernacular, Aretino's Dialogues are a series of humorous and bawdy conversations between two sharp-tongued women discussing the three occupations open to women in the Renaissance: wife, nun, and whore. Aretino, an early sixteenth-century writer and courtier, had a significant and controversial career first at the Papal court in Rome and later in Venice.

"Aretino is an extraordinary storyteller, excelled in the sixteenth century only by Cellini. His realism is picaresque; the immensely lively anecdotes woven into the Dialogues all illustrate a vision of life that is motivated by necessity...Food, clothing, money, possessions—survival, in a word—are the important things. Here is where, in my opinion, one must look for Aretino's truth. There were two Renaissances, one sumptuous and aristocratic, the other sordid and plebeian. Aretino left us unchallengeable testimony about the second. He was an involuntary witness, one who was incapable of passing judgment—for he himself was often compromised or actively conspiring—but he possessed an exceptionally quick, clear, sharp and precise eye."
—Alberto Moravia
432 pp
CLOTH: ISBN 8020-9004-4 60.00 US
PAPER: ISBN 8020-9004-0 29.95 US
plus S&H


Introduction by Nicoals J. Perella
Translation by Nicolas J. Perella

Aldo Palazzeschi (1885-1974) is arguably the major twentieth-century Italian writer who has been most neglected by the English-speaking world. Born in Florence and trained as an actor, Palazzeschi ranks high as a poet and fiction writer in his homeland. His work, which attempts to recreate the experience of a spectator watching and listening to a character on stage, won him the praise of F. T. Marinetti, the founder of Italian futurism, who enrolled the young poet in his avant-garde coterie despite the fact that, stylistically, Palazzeschi's work had little in commom with futurism. A Tournament of Misfits brings together a selection of Palazzeshi's short fiction for the first time in English. Through clear and fluid translations, Nicolas J. Perella demonstrates Palazzeschi's use of laughter to debunk social and literary myths. As a social being, Palazzeschi felt himself a deviant, but he was saved from a self-destructive bitterness by his capacity of irony, which he often directed at himself as well as others. Yet, it would be a mistake not to see the desperate yearning for liberation from society's rigid code behind the irony and the fun in Palazzeschi's work. With this translation, Perella brings Palazzeschi to life for a new audience to appreciate.
 

256 pp
CLOTH: ISBN 8020-3850-6 55.00 US
PAPER: ISBN 8020-8449-7 21.95 US
plus S&H