This summer I have been reading Sprezzatura: 50 Ways Italian Genius Shaped the World, by Peter d'Epiro and Mary Desmond Pinkowish (2001. New York: Anchor. ISBN 0-385-72019-X).

Although—coincidentally—I run a website called Sprezzatura.net, I had been reluctant to pick up this book: I had feared it might be one of those smarmy publicity jobs, a chavinistic and uncritical recycling of received ideas about Italy and Italians.

In fact, the book is an accurate, well-researched, and unsentimental conspectus. I know most of the stories in the book, but in each chapter I learned something new (in several cases things which contradicted my own received ideas) about Italy and about Western culture in general.

Each of the fifty chapters is an essay which can stand alone. Among other things, this means that it is a good book to carry and read while waiting. It has superb notes, with suggested reading for each topic, including CDs and WWW sites.