Che Bella Figura!

Che Bella Figura! PDF Author: Gloria Nardini
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438414129
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Literally translated, fare bella figura means "to make a beautiful figure," and figuratively it refers to the act of putting on a good show, performance, or display. The author uncovers the "real rules" of an Italian "ladies'" club by analyzing their language and behavior. In so doing, she gives examples of the historical and linguistic importance of this concept, as well as its potential for cross-cultural misunderstanding.

Che Bella Figura!

Che Bella Figura! PDF Author: Gloria Nardini
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438414129
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Literally translated, fare bella figura means "to make a beautiful figure," and figuratively it refers to the act of putting on a good show, performance, or display. The author uncovers the "real rules" of an Italian "ladies'" club by analyzing their language and behavior. In so doing, she gives examples of the historical and linguistic importance of this concept, as well as its potential for cross-cultural misunderstanding.

Che Bella Figura!

Che Bella Figura! PDF Author: Gloria Nardini
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791440919
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
A colorful ethnography of an Italian ladies' club, this book explores the historical and linguistic importance of the women's language and behavior.

La Bella Figura

La Bella Figura PDF Author: Beppe Severgnini
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307486877
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
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.”

Bella Figura

Bella Figura PDF Author: Kamin Mohammadi
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385354002
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
“My ideal type of armchair travel: immersive, insightful, seductive. In Bella Figura, Kamin Mohammadi takes us to the year in Florence that changed her life, and gives us the tools to bring the grace of the Italian lifestyle to our own lives.” —National Bestselling Author Stephanie Danler “She walks down the street with a swing in her step and a lift to her head. She radiates allure as if followed by a personal spotlight. She may be tall or short, slim or pneumatically curvaceous, dressed discreetly or ostentatiously—it matters not. Her gait, her composure, the very tilt of her head is an ode to grace and self-possession that makes her beautiful whatever her actual features reveal.” This is the bella figura, the Italian concept of making every aspect of life as beautiful as it can be, that Kamin Mohammadi discovered when she escaped the London corporate media world for a year in Italy. Following the lead of her new neighbors, she soon found a happier, healthier, and more beautiful way of living. The bella figura knows: • That the food that you eat should give you pleasure while eating it. Pause for meals, and set a place, even if you are eating alone. • To seize any opportunity to get moving—be it taking the stairs, doing a coffee run at work, or dancing with abandon. • To drink a spoonful of excellent-quality extra-virgin olive oil four times a day. • To seek out nature, be it a city park, a tree on your street, or some wild place. • And to love yourself. The bella figura—occupies her space, emotionally and physically, with style and entitlement.

Ciao, America!

Ciao, America! PDF Author: Beppe Severgnini
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0767912365
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
In the wry but affectionate tradition of Bill Bryson, Ciao, America! is a delightful look at America through the eyes of a fiercely funny guest—one of Italy’s favorite authors who spent a year in Washington, D.C. When Beppe Severgnini and his wife rented a creaky house in Georgetown they were determined to see if they could adapt to a full four seasons in a country obsessed with ice cubes, air-conditioning, recliner chairs, and, of all things, after-dinner cappuccinos. From their first encounters with cryptic rental listings to their back-to-Europe yard sale twelve months later, Beppe explores this foreign land with the self-described patience of a mildly inappropriate beachcomber, holding up a mirror to America’s signature manners and mores. Succumbing to his surroundings day by day, he and his wife find themselves developing a taste for Klondike bars and Samuel Adams beer, and even that most peculiar of American institutions—the pancake house. The realtor who waves a perfect bye-bye, the overzealous mattress salesman who bounces from bed to bed, and the plumber named Marx who deals in illegally powerful showerheads are just a few of the better-than-fiction characters the Severgninis encounter while foraging for clues to the real America. A trip to the computer store proves just as revealing as D.C.’s Fourth of July celebration, as do boisterous waiters angling for tips and no-parking signs crammed with a dozen lines of fine print. By the end of his visit, Severgnini has come to grips with life in these United States—and written a charming, laugh-out-loud tribute.

Italianissimo

Italianissimo PDF Author: Louise Fili
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1892145545
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
What is it about Italy that inspires passion, fascination, and utter devotion? This quirky guide to the Italian way of life, with its fifty witty mini-essays on iconic Italian subjects, will answer that question as well as entertain and delight both real and armchair travelers. Topics range from expressive hand gestures to patron saints, pasta, parmesan, shoes, opera, the Vespa, the Fiat 500, gelato, gondolas, and more. History, folklore, superstitions, traditions, and customs are tossed in a delicious sauce that also includes a wealth of factual information for the sophisticated traveler:• why lines, as we know them, are nonexistent in Italy• why a string of coral beads is often seen around a baby’s wrist• what the unlucky number of Italy is (it’s not thirteen, unless seating guests at a table, when it IS thirteen–taking into account the outcome of the Last Supper)• why red underwear begins to appear in shops as the New Year approaches In addition to the lyrical and poetic, Italianissimo provides useful and indispensable information for the traveler: deciphering the quirks of the language (while English has only one word for “you,” in Italy there are three), the best place to find balsamic vinegar (in Modena, of course), the best gelato (in Sicily, where they first invented it using the snow from Mount Etna). There are also recommendations for little-known museums and destinations (the Bodoni museum, the Pinocchio park, legendary coffee bars).This is a new kind of guidebook overflowing with enlightening and hilarious miscellaneous information, filled with luscious graphics and unforgettable photographs that will decode and enrich all trips to Italy–both real and imaginary.

The Dark Heart of Italy

The Dark Heart of Italy PDF Author: Tobias Jones
Publisher: North Point Press
ISBN: 1466804513
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
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.

The Sweetness of Doing Nothing: Live Life the Italian Way with Dolce Far Niente

The Sweetness of Doing Nothing: Live Life the Italian Way with Dolce Far Niente PDF Author: Sophie Minchilli
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0008366500
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
It’s time to embrace the Italian way of life...

The Real Metaphysical Club

The Real Metaphysical Club PDF Author: Frank X. Ryan
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438473265
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
A full account of the Metaphysical Club, featuring the members’ philosophical writings and four critical essays. The Metaphysical Club, a gathering of intellectuals in the 1870s, is widely recognized as the crucible where pragmatism, America’s distinctively original philosophy, was refined and proclaimed. Louis Menand’s bestseller about the group was a dramatic publishing success. However, only three actual members—Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Charles S. Peirce, and William James—appear in the book, alongside other thinkers who were never in the Club. The Real Metaphysical Club tells the full story of how this influential group shifted the course of philosophy in America. In addition to pioneering pragmatism, the group explored radical empiricism and idealism, and formulated personalism and process philosophy, equally important developments. This volume contains the important writings dating from 1870 to 1885 by the real members of the Metaphysical Club. The first section centers on pragmatism and science; the second part collects writings of the lawyers; and the third part covers idealist and personalist philosophers. Many of these writings have never been reprinted before, and nothing like this impressive collection has ever been attempted. A general introduction provides a narrative history, and the editors’ three introductions to the volume’s sections vividly bring to life the intense meetings, sustained debates, and pioneering thought of the Metaphysical Club. Frank X. Ryan is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Kent State University and the author of Seeing Together: Mind, Matter, and the Experimental Outlook of John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley. Brian E. Butler is Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina Asheville and the author of The Democratic Constitution: Experimentalism and Interpretation. James A. Good is Dean of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Business, and Economics Division at Lone Star College-North Harris. He is the coeditor (with John R. Shook) of John Dewey’s Philosophy of Spirit, with the 1897 Lecture on Hegel.

Veuve Clicquot

Veuve Clicquot PDF Author: Sixtine Dubly
Publisher: Assouline Publishing
ISBN: 161428539X
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 5

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Book Description
Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin has been pushing boundaries for the past 250 years. From inventing rosé champagne in 1775 to collaborating with innovators such as Andrée Putman and the Campana Brothers, with each passing century the legendary label goes above and beyond to challenge itself with new initiatives to energize and excite its enthusiasts. When Madame Clicquot, who had become the veuve (widow) Clicquot Ponsardin, inherited the house in 1805, she followed the motto “Only one quality, the finest” and created the first vintage and the riddling rack, two major innovations for champagne production. Centuries later, the brand behind the characteristic yellow label continues to make history, going beyond champagne to represent a complete lifestyle. In 2010, Veuve Clicquot’s home base in Reims reopened after an extensive four-year renovation by interior designer Bruno Moinard. Contemporary works by Yayoi Kusama, Karen Knorr, and Pablo Reinoso now adorn the eighteenth-century wood paneling at the Hôtel du Marc—a perfect combination of design, art, and gastronomy that acts as a center for sharing and spreading the wealth of a magnificent wine. Veuve Clicquot is the drink of choice in spring at Goodwood Circuit in the United Kingdom, in summer on the polo lawns of New York, and in winter on Carnival chariots in Rio. In 2013, Veuve Clicquot partnered with Michelin-starred chef Joël Robuchon, securing its wines a spot as the guest of honor in each of his twenty-three restaurants. The following year, a collaboration with Ferrari brought the limited-edition Veuve Clicquot Maranello collection. The house has also been active in the sustainability movement, reducing emissions at the Hôtel du Marc, as well as introducing “Naturally Clicquot” eco-friendly packaging, made from the pulp of grapes harvested from the most prestigious hills of the Champagne region—a global first. Between tradition and jet set, excellence and attitude, over the years the house has perfected the way of life “à la Clicquot,” a life synonymous with fine, authentic products and classic culture.