Retail Price: $35.00 WCT Price: $14.00 You Save: $21.00 (60%) Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours. Format: Hardcover, 272pp. ISBN: 0767905350 Publisher: Broadway Books Pub. Date: October 2000 Dimensions (in inches): 10.25 x 8.25 x 1.0 Item No: 0767905350

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Description
From The Publisher: 
From the bestselling author who has captured the voluptuousness of Italian life in sensuous and evocative prose, comes a lavishly illustrated celebration of Tuscany's people, food, landscapes, and art, as well as the abundant pleasures of Italian life as it is lived at home, at festivals, feasts, restaurants, and markets, in the kitchen and on the piazza, and in the vineyards, fields, and olive groves.

Combining all-new essays and more than 150 full-color photographs taken at Mayes's direction by the award-winning travel photographer Bob Krist, In Tuscany is divided into five sections, each celebrating an aspect of Tuscan life:

La Piazza - the locus of the Italian village. With photographs of shop signs, tiny museums and medieval courtyards, people, their pets and their cars, and snippets of conversations overheard, Mayes reveals the life of the piazza in her town of Cortona as well as less-traveled places such as Volterra, Asciano, Monte San Savino, and Poppi.

La Festa - the celebration. In essays and photos of several kinds of feasts and celebrations, such as the Christmas dinner for twenty-seven at a neighbor's house and a donkey race around the church near Montepulciano, Mayes illustrates how the Tuscans celebrate the seasons -- their open ways of friendship, their connection to nature, and most of all, their sense of abundance.

Il Campo - the field. Here Edward Mayes evokes the deep sense of the shift of seasons as he hunts for mushrooms and picks olives before heading off to the olive oil mill and enjoying the first bruschetta with the new oil.

La Cucina - the kitchen. An intimate view of the all-important role of the kitchen in Tuscan culture, including photographs of Mayes's own bright kitchen and gardens, menus from great local cooks, the elements of the Tuscan table, signature dishes with cultural and culinary notes on each, and, of course, delectable recipes.

La Bellezza - the beauty. From the quality of the light falling on sublime landscapes in different seasons and Tuscan faces in moments of laughter, to a silhouette of cypress trees in the early evening and a pile of marmalade cats asleep, In Tuscany features views of beauty that reveal the singular splendor of one of the world's best-loved and most visited regions.

Reviews

From Library Journal  
Revisit Tuscany with Mayes, who takes us from the piazza to the campo to lavish Christmas dinners. With 150 lush color photographs. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
 
From Publisher's Weekly  
Riding on the success of her previous books, Mayes, who here collaborates with her husband, returns with a curious amalgam of cookbook, coffee-table book, travel guide and memoir. As in Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany, Mayes lovingly admires her adopted Tuscany, where she purchased a villa 10 years ago. Chapters are loosely organized around general concepts: for instance, "Baci (Kisses)" focuses on Italian effusiveness; "La Piazza" centers on the meeting place of Italian village life; and "La Festa (Celebration)" opens with a quote from a song by Jovanotti (an Italian pop band) and goes on to classify the many types of celebrations held in Italy, from Siena's Palio to weekly Sunday lunches. Mayes includes 25 recipes throughout the book, though concentrated in the chapters "La Cucina" and "Il Campo." While there are local recipes such as Onion Soup in the Arezzo Style and Chicken Liver on Little Crusts, some of her choices are puzzling. Mayes freely appropriates non-Tuscan items such as Capri's famed limoncello and Parmesan cheese and even provides a recipe for the mirepoix that is the base of many Italian dishes. A list of resources provides a calendar of festivals in the region as well as addresses and phone numbers for bars, restaurants and specialty stores. Kirst's (Spirit of the Place) endearing photos of Tuscan life fill the pages. (October) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

About the Authors and Photographer
Frances Mayes is author of the New York Times bestsellers Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy (combined total of over 1.5 million copies in print) as well as five books of poetry. A frequent contributor to food and travel publications, she divides her time between Cortona, Italy, and San Francisco, where she is Professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. Edward Mayes is the author of Work and Days and five other books of poetry. He is director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Clara University. Bob Krist is the author of Spirit of the Place: The Art of the Traveling Photographer. His international photography has appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Smithsonian, Islands, and many other publications. A contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler and Popular Photography, he lives in New Hope, Pennsylvania.

 


Table of Contents

	Baci	23
	La Piazza	44
	La Festa	104
	Il Campo	132
	La Cucina	172
	La Bellezza	228
	Dove	266

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