The Dark Heart Of Italy

The Dark Heart Of Italy Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of The Dark Heart Of Italy book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.

The Dark Heart of Italy

Author : Tobias Jones
Publisher : Faber & Faber
Page : 372 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2008-09-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9780571246052

Get Book

The Dark Heart of Italy by Tobias Jones Pdf

An essential guide to the strange, sometimes sinister culture of contemporary Italy. In 1999 Tobias Jones travelled to Italy, expecting to discover the pastoral bliss described by centuries of foreign visitors and famous writers. Instead, he discovered a very different country, besieged by unfathomable terrorism and deep-seated paranoia, where crime is scarcely ever met with punishment. Now, in this fascinating travelogue, Jones explores not just Italy's familiar delights (art, climate, cuisine), but the livelier and stranger sides of the bel paese: language, football, Catholicism, cinema, television and terrorism. Why, he wonders, do bombs still explode every time politics start getting serious? Why does everyone urge him to go home as soon as possible, saying that Italy is a 'brothel'? And why do people warn him that 'Clean Hands' only disguise 'Dirty Feet'?

The Dark Heart of Italy

Author : Tobias Jones
Publisher : North Point Press
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2005-05-19
Category : Travel
ISBN : 9781466804517

Get Book

The Dark Heart of Italy by Tobias Jones Pdf

In 1999 Tobias Jones immigrated to Italy, expecting to discover the pastoral bliss described by centuries of foreign visitors. Instead, he found a very different country: one besieged by unfathomable terrorism and deep-seated paranoia. The Dark Heart of Italy is Jones's account of his four-year voyage across the Italian peninsula. Jones writes not just about Italy's art, climate, and cuisine but also about the much livelier and stranger sides of the Bel Paese: the language, soccer, Catholicism, cinema, television, and terrorism. Why, he wonders, does the parliament need a "slaughter commission"? Why do bombs still explode every time politics start getting serious? Why does everyone urge him to go home as soon as possible, saying that Italy is a "brothel"? Most of all, why does one man, Silvio Berlusconi--in the words of a famous song--appear to own everything from Padre Nostro (Our Father) to Cosa Nostra (the Mafia)? The Italy that emerges from Jones's travels is a country scarred by civil wars and "illustrious corpses"; a country that is proudly visual rather than verbal, based on aesthetics rather than ethics; a country where crime is hardly ever followed by punishment; a place of incredible illusionism, where it is impossible to distinguish fantasy from reality and fact from fiction.

Mafia

Author : A.G.D. Maran
Publisher : Random House
Page : 311 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2011-09-02
Category : History
ISBN : 9781780572369

Get Book

Mafia by A.G.D. Maran Pdf

The pre-dawn arrests of the last remaining mafiosi in December 2008 signalled the end of the Sicilian Mafia as we know it. In Mafia: Inside the Dark Heart, A.G.D. Maran charts the complete history of the world's most infamous criminal organisation, from its first incarnation as an alternative form of local government in the Sicilian countryside and arguable force for 'good' to the more familiar form that has been immortalised in films such as The Godfather, and its final defeat after a long-awaited change of attitude by the Italian government. The author has used his many Italian contacts and a decade of exhaustive research to bring to life the story of the Sicilian Mafia while also exploring the links to the Cosa Nostra in America. Along the way, he asks many provocative questions, including: Why was Lucky Luciano, the father of modern organised crime, freed from a life sentence in America and deported to Italy, allowing him to organise the international drug trade? Was the Mafia involved in the death of Pope John Paul I? Why did the Mafia murder Roberto Calvi, known as God's Banker? What is the relationship between the Mafia and Freemasonry? Why did successive Italian governments fail to tackle the Mafia? Why did it take 40 years to find the Last Godfathers? These and many other riveting issues are covered in Maran's refreshing new take on a perennially enthralling subject.

The Dark Heart of Florence

Author : Tasha Alexander
Publisher : Minotaur Books
Page : 267 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2021-03-09
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781250622075

Get Book

The Dark Heart of Florence by Tasha Alexander Pdf

In the next Lady Emily Mystery, The Dark Heart of Florence, critically acclaimed author Tasha Alexander transports readers to the legendary city of Florence, where Lady Emily and Colin must solve a murder with clues leading back to the time of the Medici. In 1903, tensions between Britain and Germany are starting to loom over Europe, something that has not gone unnoticed by Lady Emily and her husband, Colin Hargreaves. An agent of the Crown, Colin carries the weight of the Empire, but his focus is drawn to Italy by a series of burglaries at his daughter’s palazzo in Florence—burglaries that might have international ramifications. He and Emily travel to Tuscany where, soon after their arrival, a stranger is thrown to his death from the roof onto the marble palazzo floor. Colin’s trusted colleague and fellow agent, Darius Benton-Smith, arrives to assist Colin, who insists their mission must remain top secret. Finding herself excluded from the investigation, Emily secretly launches her own clandestine inquiry into the murder, aided by her spirited and witty friend, Cécile. They soon discover that the palazzo may contain a hidden treasure dating back to the days of the Medici and the violent reign of the fanatic monk, Savonarola—days that resonate in the troubled early twentieth century, an uneasy time full of intrigue, duplicity, and warring ideologies. Emily and Cécile race to untangle the cryptic clues leading them through the Renaissance city, but an unimagined danger follows closely behind. And when another violent death puts Emily directly in the path of a killer, there’s much more than treasure at stake...

La Bella Figura

Author : Beppe Severgnini
Publisher : Crown
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2008-11-12
Category : Travel
ISBN : 9780307486875

Get Book

La Bella Figura by Beppe Severgnini Pdf

Join the bestselling author of Ciao, America! on a lively tour of modern Italy that takes you behind the seductive face it puts on for visitors—la bella figura—and highlights its maddening, paradoxical true self You won’t need luggage for this hypothetical and hilarious trip into the hearts and minds of Beppe Severgnini’s fellow Italians. In fact, Beppe would prefer if you left behind the baggage his crafty and elegant countrymen have smuggled into your subconscious. To get to his Italia, you’ll need to forget about your idealized notions of Italy. Although La Bella Figura will take you to legendary cities and scenic regions, your real destinations are the places where Italians are at their best, worst, and most authentic: The highway: in America, a red light has only one possible interpretation—Stop! An Italian red light doesn’t warn or order you as much as provide an invitation for reflection. The airport: where Italians prove that one of their virtues (an appreciation for beauty) is really a vice. Who cares if the beautiful girls hawking cell phones in airport kiosks stick you with an outdated model? That’s the price of gazing upon perfection. The small town: which demonstrates the Italian genius for pleasant living: “a congenial barber . . . a well-stocked newsstand . . . professionally made coffee and a proper pizza; bell towers we can recognize in the distance, and people with a kind word and a smile for everyone.” The chaos of the roads, the anarchy of the office, the theatrical spirit of the hypermarkets, and garrulous train journeys; the sensory reassurance of a church and the importance of the beach; the solitude of the soccer stadium and the crowded Italian bedroom; the vertical fixations of the apartment building and the horizontal democracy of the eat-in kitchen. As you venture to these and many other locations rooted in the Italian psyche, you realize that Beppe has become your Dante and shown you a country that “has too much style to be hell” but is “too disorderly to be heaven.” Ten days, thirty places. From north to south. From food to politics. From saintliness to sexuality. This ironic, methodical, and sentimental examination will help you understand why Italy—as Beppe says—“can have you fuming and then purring in the space of a hundred meters or ten minutes.”

Blood on the Altar

Author : Tobias Jones
Publisher : Faber & Faber
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2012-02-28
Category : True Crime
ISBN : 9780571274956

Get Book

Blood on the Altar by Tobias Jones Pdf

One Sunday morning in 1993 a 16-year-old girl named Eliza Claps goes missing from a church in the centre of Potenza, Italy. Shortly before her disappearance, Elisa had met Danilo Restivo, a strange local boy with a fetish for cutting women's hair on the back of buses. Elisa's family are convinced that Resitvo is responsible for their daughter's disappearance, but he is protected by local big-wigs: by his Sicilian father, by a doctor with links to organised crime, by a priest who had vices of his own. Years went by and Elisa's family could find only false leads. 2002, and Restivo is now living in Bournemouth. In November that year, his neighbour is found murdered, with strands of her own hair in her hands. Once again the police are at a loss to pin anything on him. It's not until 2010, when Elisa's decomposed body is found in the church where she went missing, that the two cases are linked and Restivo is finally dealt with. Blood on the Altar combines a gripping true crime case with Jones's deep understanding of Italian culture - the impunity it offers to the powerful - he so expertly demonstrated in his bestseller: The Dark Heart of Italy.

Ultra

Author : Tobias Jones
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 439 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2019-09-19
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9781786697356

Get Book

Ultra by Tobias Jones Pdf

Winner of the Daily Telegraph Football Book of the Year Ultras are often compared to punks, Hell's Angels, hooligans or the South American Barras Bravas. But in truth, they are a thoroughly Italian phenomenon... From the author of The Dark Heart of Italy, Blood on the Altar and A Place of Refuge. Italy's ultras are the most organised and violent fans in European football. Many groups have evolved into criminal gangs, involved in ticket-touting, drug-dealing and murder. A cross between the Hell's Angels and hooligans, they're often the foot-soldiers of the Mafia and have been instrumental in the rise of the far-right. But the purist ultras say that they are are insurgents fighting against a police state and modern football. Only amongst the ultras, they say, can you find belonging, community and a sacred concept of sport. They champion not just their teams, they say, but their forgotten suburbs and the dispossessed. Through the prism of the ultras, Jones crafts a compelling investigation into Italian society and its favourite sport. He writes about not just the ultras of some of Italy's biggest clubs – Juventus, Torino, Lazio, Roma and Genoa – but also about its lesser-known ones from Cosenza and Catania. He examines the sinister side of football fandom, with its violence and political extremism, but also admires the passion, wit, solidarity and style of a fascinating and contradictory subculture.

The Dry Heart

Author : Natalia Ginzburg
Publisher : New Directions Publishing
Page : 94 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2019-06-25
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780811228794

Get Book

The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg Pdf

Finally back in print, a frighteningly lucid feminist horror story about marriage The Dry Heart begins and ends with the matter-of-fact pronouncement: “I shot him between the eyes.” As the tale—a plunge into the chilly waters of loneliness, desperation, and bitterness—proceeds, the narrator's murder of her flighty husband takes on a certain logical inevitability. Stripped of any preciousness or sentimentality, Natalia Ginzburg's writing here is white-hot, tempered by rage. She transforms the unhappy tale of an ordinary dull marriage into a rich psychological thriller that seems to beg the question: why don't more wives kill their husbands?

The Dark Heart of Hollywood

Author : Douglas Thompson
Publisher : Random House
Page : 143 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2012-09-06
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781780574578

Get Book

The Dark Heart of Hollywood by Douglas Thompson Pdf

This book reveals the sinister true story of the Mafia in Hollywood. Crammed with legends, myths, murders, madness, mayhem, superstar tantrums, super-sexed starlets, power brokers and politics, it is an ambitious account of Hollywood’s hidden history, from the rogue cops who took on the Mob on the streets of Los Angeles to the stars who became stars because Mafia Godfathers said they would. In The Dark Heart of Hollywood, seasoned crime and entertainment writer Douglas Thompson reveals how all is masterminded by the money-obsessed Mafia, for whom everything and everyone is simply a commodity. The intense saga charges across America: from Hollywood bedrooms to the Oval Office, from California’s twenty-first century computer capital to the cocaine-connection HQs stretching from the Sunset Strip to Marseilles, Milan, Moscow, Tokyo and Beijing. In this magnificent and highly compelling volume, Hollywood is unveiled as Tinseltown without the tinsel.

Mafia: Inside the Dark Heart

Author : A. G.D. Maran
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 416 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2010-12-07
Category : True Crime
ISBN : 9781429927376

Get Book

Mafia: Inside the Dark Heart by A. G.D. Maran Pdf

An, expansive, intriguing and meticulous account of the Sicilian Mafia. The pre-dawn arrests of the last remaining mafiosi in December 2008 signaled the end of the Sicilian Mafia as we know it. In Mafia: Inside the Dark Heart, A.G.D. Maran charts the complete history of the world's most infamous criminal organization, from its first incarnation as an alternative form of local government in the Sicilian countryside and arguable force for "good," to the more familiar form that has been immortalized films such as The Godfather, and its final defeat after a long-awaited change of attitude by the Italian government. The son of an Italian immigrant, A.G.D. Maran had always been interested in the Mafia, but it was a recently uncovered family secret that led him on a journey deeper into its dark heart. Along the way, he asks many provocative questions, including: - Was one of the biggest errors the United States made to free and deport Lucky Luciano to Italy, where he organized the international drug trade? - How and why did the Vatican get duped into helping the Mafia? - Why did the Mafia murder Roberto Calvi, known as God's Banker? - What is the relationship between the Mafia and Freemasonry? - Why did successive Italian governments fail to tackle the Mafia? - Why did it take 40 years to find the Last Godfathers? These and many other riveting issues are covered in Maran's refreshing new take on a perennially enthralling subject. After a decade of exhaustive research, including interviews with his many Italian contacts, in this book Maran brings to life the story of the rise and fall of the Sicilian Mafia while also exploring its links to the Cosa Nostra in America.

The Italians

Author : John Hooper
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2015-01-29
Category : Travel
ISBN : 9780698183643

Get Book

The Italians by John Hooper Pdf

Washington Post bestseller Los Angeles Times bestseller A vivid and surprising portrait of the Italian people from an admired foreign correspondent How did a nation that spawned the Renaissance also produce the Mafia? And why does Italian have twelve words for coat hanger but none for hangover? John Hooper’s entertaining and perceptive new book is the ideal companion for anyone seeking to understand contemporary Italy and the unique character of the Italians. Fifteen years as a foreign correspondent based in Rome have sharpened Hooper’s observations, and he looks at the facts that lie behind the stereotypes, shedding new light on everything from the Italians’ bewildering politics to their love of life and beauty. Hooper persuasively demonstrates the impact of geography, history, and tradition on many aspects of Italian life, including football and Freemasonry, sex, food, and opera. Brimming with the kind of fascinating—and often hilarious—insights unavailable in guidebooks, The Italians will surprise even the most die-hard Italophile.

Utopian Dreams

Author : Tobias Jones
Publisher : Faber & Faber
Page : 179 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2012-10-04
Category : Travel
ISBN : 9780571300211

Get Book

Utopian Dreams by Tobias Jones Pdf

Utopian Dreams offers one writer's attempt to retreat from the 'real world' - which is making him emptier and angrier by the day - and seek out the alternatives to modern manners and morality. Instead of cynicism, loneliness and depression, is it possible to be idealistic, to find belonging and companionship with others who share your sadness, or even, perhaps, your happiness? With his wife and baby in tow, Jones spends a year with spritualists, time-travellers, reformed drug addicts and Quakers, producing a fascinating exploration of the meaning of community.

The Salati Case

Author : Tobias Jones
Publisher : Faber & Faber
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2009-09-17
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780571254422

Get Book

The Salati Case by Tobias Jones Pdf

Castagnetti (informally known as 'Casta') is a private detective who doesn't do things by the book. He's dogged and lonely, impatient with the world of appearances and deceit. So when a pompous notary commissions him to verify that a missing person is "presumed dead" in order to dispose of a dead woman's estate to the other heirs, Casta smells a rat. Before long he's reopening wounds from years ago and exposing family secrets to those who have tried to suppress them. The relatives of Signora Salati just want their their inheritance, but Casta is going to make sure they get their just desserts as well. Because Casta isn't the sort to content himself with "presumed dead". He likes certainty, the kind of certainty that comes from seeing a skeleton. As the Salati case progresses, other corpses appear and Casta realises he's at the centre of an old-fashioned Italian whodunit. The Salti Case marks the appearance of a new and memorable detective: an orphan who has pulled himself up from the mean streets.

The Dark Wife

Author : Sarah Diemer
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : Lesbians
ISBN : 1461179939

Get Book

The Dark Wife by Sarah Diemer Pdf

Three thousand years ago, a god told a lie. Now, only a goddess can tell the truth. Persephone has everything a daughter of Zeus could want--except for freedom. She lives on the green earth with her mother, Demeter, growing up beneath the ever-watchful eyes of the gods and goddesses on Mount Olympus. But when Persephone meets the enigmatic Hades, she experiences something new: choice. Zeus calls Hades "lord" of the dead as a joke. In truth, Hades is the goddess of the underworld, and no friend of Zeus. She offers Persephone sanctuary in her land of the dead, so the young goddess may escape her Olympian destiny. But Persephone finds more than freedom in the underworld. She finds love, and herself.

The Miracle of Castel di Sangro

Author : Joe McGinniss
Publisher : Crown
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2000-06-06
Category : Travel
ISBN : 9780767905992

Get Book

The Miracle of Castel di Sangro by Joe McGinniss Pdf

Master storyteller Joe McGinniss travels to Italy to cover the unlikely success of a ragtag minor league soccer team--and delivers a brilliant and utterly unforgettable story of life in an off-the-beaten-track Italian village. When Joe McGinniss sets out for the remote Italian village of Castel di Sangro one summer, he merely intends to spend a season with the village's soccer team, which only weeks before had, miraculously, reached the second-highest-ranking professional league in the land. But soon he finds himself embroiled with an absurd yet irresistible cast of characters, including the team's owner, described by the New York Times as "straight out of a Mario Puzo novel," and coach Osvaldo Jaconi, whose only English word is the one he uses to describe himself: "bulldozer." As the riotous, edge-of-your-seat season unfolds, McGinniss develops a deepening bond with the team, their village and its people, and their country. Traveling with the miracle team, from the isolated mountain region where Castel di Sangro is located to gritty towns as well as grand cities, McGinniss introduces us to an Italy that no tourist guidebook has ever described, and comes away with a "sad, funny, desolating, and inspiring story--everything, in fact, a story should be" (Los Angeles Times).