Book club date September 24, 2022 A popular history that refutes common misperceptions of the European Middle Ages, showing the beauty and communion that flourished alongside the dark brutality—a brilliant reflection of humanity itself. The myth of the “Dark Ages” obscures the truth that this was a remarkable period in human history. The Bright Ages…
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. Author Luigi Barzini was an Italian journalist, writer and politician most famous for his 1964 book The Italians, delving deeply into the Italian national…
The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life the most intriguing woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt. Author Schiff has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities and was a Director’s Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New…
Beginning in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Elena Ferrante’s four-volume story spans almost sixty years, as its main characters, the fiery and unforgettable Lila and the bookish narrator, Elena, become women, wives, mothers, and leaders. Author Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist. Ferrante’s books, originally published…
The Pope and Mussolini tells the story of two men who came to power in 1922, and together changed the course of twentieth-century history. One was scholarly and devout, the other thuggish and profane. Yet Pius XI and “Il Duce” had many things in common. Author David Israel Kertzer (1948) is an American anthropologist, historian,…
