Marcello Rubini, a frustrated 'serious' writer, does tabloid journalism to make ends meet. He spends every evening in Via Veneto awaiting the next scandal, party invitation, or sexual proposition. From an enigmatic woman named Maddalena, to wealthy intellectual Steiner's penthouse, to a famous actress named Sylvia, Marcello finds himself caught up in the carnival spectacle of nightlife and its fleeting happiness. The empty evenings seem to weave together,...

The Eternal Table: A Cultural History of Food in Rome is the first concise history of the food, gastronomy, and cuisine of Rome spanning from pre-Roman to modern times. It is a social history of the Eternal City seen through the lens of eating and feeding, as it advanced over the centuries in a city that fascinates like no other. The history of food in Rome unfolds as an engaging and enlightening narrative, recounting the human partnership with what...

The immigrant tenants of a building in Rome offer skewed accounts of a murder in this prize-winning satire by the Algerian-born Italian author (Publishers Weekly).
Piazza Vittorio is home to a polyglot community of immigrants who have come to Rome from all over the world. But when a tenant is murdered in the building's elevator, the delicate balance is thrown into disarray. As each of the victim's neighbors is questioned by the police,...

At one time, Rome was the center of the world. From there, the Roman Empire once spanned three continents. Over the centuries, modern Italy grew to make Rome its capital, bringing a new sense of unity to the people, along with influences from around that long-dead empire, evidence of which is all around the visitor to Rom. Inside, visit this vibrant city where the past is always just around the corner, but never holds back an exciting future.

In 1947 a young American woman named Eleanor Clark went to Rome on a Guggenheim fellowship to write a novel. But Rome had its way with her, the novel was abandoned, and what followed was not a novel but a series of sketches of Roman life, most written between 1948 and 1951. This new edition of her now classic book includes an evocative foreword by the eminent translator William Weaver, who was a close friend of the author's and often wandered the...

"As his twin daughters approached adolescence, sociologist Roger Friedland was worried. The thing that most bothered him was not the erotic heat of America's youth culture, but the lovelessness of its sex. Offered the chance to live and teach in Rome, Roger and his wife, Debra, seized the opportunity to take their family to live in a city where love is alive, family bonds hold, divorce and rape are rare, and "ciao, bella" is a constant refrain. In...

Describes the building of the Colosseum in ancient Rome, and tells how it was used.

***Please note that this ebook does not contain the photo insert that appears in the print book.*** The ash of Mt. Vesuvius preserves a living record of the complex and exhilarating society it instantly obliterated two thousand years ago. In this highly readable, lavishly illustrated book, Alex Butterworth and Ray Laurence marshal cutting-edge archaeological reconstructions and a vibrant historical tradition dating to Pliny and Tacitus; they present...

While telling about her life in ancient Rome, eight-year-old Flavia includes information about the homes, families, clothing, food, gods, sports, goods traded, and things the people build.