This Italian Life: People and Places

When journalist Phyllis Macchioni announced that she was moving to Italy, her father said, “Remember this: Italy is the land of the plague, the Inquisition, dark and dank dungeons and rapscallions who skulk around in the middle of the night looking to cause trouble.” She went anyway. Now, twenty-five years later, Macchioni shows us the Italy she loves, the Italy she got to know one person and one place at a time. From His Tremendousness, Giorgio Carbone, a bewhiskered grower of mimosa flowers who became the Prince of Serborga, a small sovereign state high in the hills above the Italian Riviera, to Enrico Pieri, the sole survivor of one of the worst massacres of World War II, her stories of people and places in Italy might make you laugh or maybe cry, but most certainly they will touch your heart.