Tag: Italy

Lent by Jo Walton

Lent by Jo Walton

In Lent, Jo Walton takes the life of Girolamo Savonarola both seriously and literally. Not only his life, the whole framework in which he lived that life: God, demons, Purgatory, the Rule of St. Benedict, the Dominican Order to which Savonarola was dedicated, his desire to create a new Jerusalem in Italy, and ever so …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/12/31/lent-by-jo-walton/

My Real Children by Jo Walton

My Real Children by Jo Walton

In 2015 Patricia Cowan has passed getting on in years and is definitely old. She’s reasonably well taken care of in the home where she lives now. She’s often confused, though, sometimes very confused, “VC” as it says in the notes the nurses and aides make. She’s not surprised, though; her mother struggled with dementia …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/22/my-real-children-by-jo-walton/

The Book Of Hidden Things by Francesco Dimitri

In all honesty, I can’t decide whether I liked that ending or not. It sorta demands more storytelling when this book is clearly complete as it is, and while I could not help but smile in satisfaction at the last word of the novel, I also felt — in hindsight and not, crucially, at the …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/07/05/the-book-of-hidden-things-by-francesco-dimitri/

Pirate Utopia by Bruce Sterling

The collapse of the European empires at the end of World War I produced considerable political strangeness. Béla Kun. The Czech Legion in Siberia. The Bavarian Soviet Republic. Baron Ungern. Flights of fancy, seizures of power, and some powerfully fancy seizures. In Pirate Utopia, Bruce Sterling sails off to another corner of collapsing empires rubbing …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/09/27/pirate-utopia-by-bruce-sterling/

Postwar by Tony Judt

Two things stand out for me about Postwar, by Tony Judt. First, it is a stupendous historical synthesis that aims to tell a mostly political history of all of Europe — East and West, North and South — from 1945 through its publication in 2005. Second, I should have been writing reflections about it as I …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/06/16/postwar-by-tony-judt/

Mussolini’s Italy by R.J.B. Bosworth

I had set aside Mussolini’s Italy for the better part of a year after writing about the first third of it, and then I picked it up again just a few weeks ago. Zeitgeist, I suppose.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/03/23/mussolinis-italy-by-r-j-b-bosworth/

Premature Evaluation: Mussolini’s Italy by R.J.B. Bosworth

I suppose it would be smart to wait until I got to the part where Italy can properly be said to be Mussolini’s before writing about a book called Mussolini’s Italy, but my progress through this volume has been so slow — “deliberate” would be a kinder word, if less accurate — that I might …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/02/03/premature-evaluation-mussolinis-italy-by-r-j-b-bosworth/

Rome and Italy by Livy

Mostly this is a record of Rome’s interminable wars with the Samnites. War is hardly a trivial event, but Rome fought so many wars during this period that reading about one battle after another becomes wearying. The most interesting and unusual thing that happened during this period was that a Vestal Virgin violated her vow …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/09/11/rome-and-italy-by-livy/

Modern Italy by John Foot

The author takes a thematic rather than a chronological approach to Italian history; I was skeptical at first, but he makes it work. The chief problem he attacks is why Italy never developed as a nation-state the way other European nations did. Italians have supposedly always lacked any sense of nationalism, but the author points …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/06/11/modern-italy-by-john-foot/

The Day of Battle by Rick Atkinson

The Italian campaign has been neglected by most World War II historians; Rick Atkinson brings it vividly to life. It is a story of almost perpetual tactical and strategic blunders, in which the steady application of brute force rather than brilliant leadership or maneuvering decided the contest. The rivalry among generals was horrific, and there …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/01/14/the-day-of-battle-by-rick-atkinson/