100 Best Italy Books of All Time

Nicole BaldinuI didn’t want this book to end. And I’ve gone back and listened to the audio version in Italian too. I’m lucky that my second language is Italian, as I got to enjoy it twice over! This book was wildly successful and for good reasons, it has everything you’d want in a story, love, friendship, history, humor, sadness and tragedy. All in four delicious volumes that, again, you wish would keep going... (Source)

Flora PringleI think Elena Ferrante writes brilliantly about the challenges of motherhood and building something for yourself. In the Neapolitan Novels she talks about her character breaking out of her poor, restrictive, mafia background through reading and learning. She breaks her boundaries and becomes an accomplished writer. In the third book particularly, Elena speaks fluently about the envy we feel of... (Source)

Eric RipertA fascinating study and still wholly relevant. (Source)

Neil deGrasse TysonWhich books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet? [...] The Prince (Machiavelli) [to learn that people not in power will do all they can to acquire it, and people in power will do all they can to keep it]. If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world. (Source)

Ryan HolidayOf course, this is a must read. Machiavelli is one of those figures and writers who is tragically overrated and underrated at the same time. Unfortunately that means that many people who read him miss the point and other people avoid him and miss out altogether. Take Machiavelli slow, and really read him. Also understand the man behind the book–not just as a masterful writer but a man who... (Source)

Vanora BennettI read this a few years ago and it was one of those books you always remember because it creates a whole new way of thinking. I had no idea at the time that the medieval mindset was any different to the modern one. It is about the adventure of a Franciscan friar and his novice in medieval Italy and it is part murder mystery, part game with semiotics and medieval knowledge. At university I read... (Source)

Nick CleggThis is one of the very few novels that I’ve read twice. (Source)

Colin ThubronOh God. Well, officially it’s Marco Polo describing the cities of his travels to Kublai Khan. It’s been opined that every city he describes is a version of Venice, but I think that doesn’t really work. They seem to me to be marvellous imaginative fantasies, which sometimes reproduce states of mind. There are 40 or so cities described, all entirely imaginary I think, and that’s what’s so magical... (Source)

James MeekIt has different layers. The set-up is that Kublai Khan has conquered this vast empire; an empire so large that he, sitting at the centre of it, cannot know all the many parts of it. He can’t visit them, he can’t see them, and if he goes to one part all the other parts have changed. So he sits there at the centre of his empire and Marco Polo travels around and visits the various cities and comes... (Source)

Hind MakkiA Room With a View. The book is great. The movie is better. https://t.co/Q8E0KXD4kj (Source)

Chelsea FrankI read everything with an open mind, often challenging myself by choosing books with an odd perspective or religious/spiritual views. These books do not reflect my personal feelings but are books that helped shape my perspective on life, love, and happiness. (Source)

Gabriel CoarnaI started reading "Eat, Pray, Love" as soon as I finished watching Elizabeth Gilbert give this talk. (Source)

Bill GatesI think Leonardo was one of the most fascinating people ever. Although today he’s best known as a painter, Leonardo had an absurdly wide range of interests, from human anatomy to the theater. Isaacson does the best job I’ve seen of pulling together the different strands of Leonardo’s life and explaining what made him so exceptional. A worthy follow-up to Isaacson’s great biographies of Albert... (Source)

Satya NadellaMicrosoft CEO has plunged into what must be an advance copy of Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson, who has written biographies of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein and Ben Franklin. Isaacson’s biography is based on the Renaissance master’s personal notebooks, so you know we’re going to be taken into the creative mind of the genius. (Source)

Ryan HolidayTruly excellent book about one of history’s all time greats. (Source)

Gretchen RubinReading novels about happiness or seeing movies about happiness doesn’t necessarily make you feel happy. Sometimes you want to read a book that makes you feel happy and The Enchanted April is just one of the most charming books. It’s about four women who are each unhappy in their own ways and decide to take a break from grey England by renting a house in Italy, and their lives are completely... (Source)

Ella BerthoudAt the beginning of this book, two women in the 1920s are in a club in Hampstead [London] on a rainy day. They see a newspaper advert: “To those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine. Small medieval Italian castle to be let for the month of April.” Both go off into a reverie, and talk themselves into squandering their nest eggs on a month in this castle. They find two other people to join them – a... (Source)

Jordan B PetersonA Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway https://t.co/dwAYVoKl3K, a book from my great books list https://t.co/AxBNX3QpMb (Source)

Julia EnthovenFor non-business, I’ve loved so many different books that it’s hard to pick a favorite. Recently, I’ve enjoyed The Art of Fielding and Americanah, and I love classics like A Farewell to Arms and Lord of the Flies. (Source)

Jordan Peterson[Jordan Peterson recommended this book on his website.] (Source)

Arianna HuffingtonI find [this book] so inspirational and instructive, it lives on my nightstand. (Source)

Chip ConleyI have given [this book] away to a number of people. (Source)

Marvin LiaoMy list would be (besides the ones I mentioned in answer to the previous question) both business & Fiction/Sci-Fi and ones I personally found helpful to myself. The business books explain just exactly how business, work & investing are in reality & how to think properly & differentiate yourself. On the non-business side, a mix of History & classic fiction to understand people, philosophy to make... (Source)

A N WilsonI don’t think there’s anything in world literature to compare with the last few cantos of the Paradiso as a Christian statement. (Source)

Nick HavelyIt is a close and reliable translation, with the original text on the facing page, and it also has excellent notes. (Source)

Chris WalshThe Inferno is the classic moment of people not wanting to talk about cowardice. (Source)

Mark BittmanI used to buy [this book] for a lot of people because I just thought if you hadn’t read it, you had to but maybe that era is over. (Source)

William BoydThe most wonderful novel ever written, because of its absurdist sense of humour and the way it looked at war. (Source)

William BoydThe most wonderful novel ever written, because of its absurdist sense of humour and the way it looked at war. (Source)

Robert BaerThis book is all about Italians stationed on a remote Eurasian frontier. Of course they never were, but The Tartar Steppe is a metaphor for devoting your life to a higher good, for wanting to do public service and to make a difference. And you essentially give up everything. The main character, Giovanni Drogo, gives up his fiancée, his mother and his friends to wait for the Tartars who never... (Source)

Paul TherouxI chose this book because not many people know it – it’s hardly on every bookshelf. Carlo Levi was an Italian Jew from Florence, banished in the 1930s by the Mussolini government for criticising the war in Ethiopia. He is sent to the ends of the earth, and it happens that the ends of the earth in Italy is southern Italy. (Source)

Paula FredriksenThis is such a beautiful memoir. Levi was in political exile for a year under Mussolini, sent to a very impoverished town in the south of Italy. Levi himself is from Turin – aristocratic, well educated, left-leaning politically, very urban and urbane. This tiny dusty town shocks him, both its poverty and its class structure. (Source)

Cornelia FunkeI owe this book to the children I worked with as a social worker. (Source)

Eric Weinstein[Eric Weinstein recommended this book on Twitter.] (Source)

Antony BeevorThis book is about…the Stalinist repression of the areas known as the borderlands, which Snyder has termed the bloodlands. Snyder is looking at the deliberate mass murder of civilians in a particular zone of Europe between about 1930, at the start of the second Ukraine famine, and 1945. (Source)

Edward LucasBloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin offers the best account of the most important and terrible years of the last century, when Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler jointly consigned the territories and people between their two empires to the meat-grinder. (Source)

Sarah Chihaya and Merve EmreIt’s the most suffocating book I can think of—an incredibly claustrophobic novel in that it’s literally about a woman who’s trapped in her apartment with her children and her dying German shepherd … It’s the fictional exercise of being trapped in your home, the self you’ve constituted. It’s the opposite of home invasion; it’s the opposite of how most fiction works. There’s something so... (Source)

Olly Murphy (Wycombe Abbey)I think SPQR is a wonderful book. Ancient Roman history is so very dense and intricate that it can be difficult to teach and learn about. Mary Beard makes it accessible—and she goes through it all, from the early days right up until the present day. (Source)

William FiennesThey’re a mixture of short stories and autobiographical essays, or essays in autobiography. Levi uses the elements from the periodic table as a way of organising memory. He uses 21 elements, each as a doorway or wormhole into a particular area of his experience, into a particular memory – but leaving out his time in Auschwitz, because he’d already written about that. You get his early interest in... (Source)

Tim RadfordIt’s a life story by a chemist seen through the prism of an elemental substance. Some of it doesn’t work very well and some of it works very well. There’s a lovely chapter on iron that refers to the arrival of the Fascist era. There’s a much more personal account involving mine tailings and the extraction of precious metals from mine tailing, which he was employed at. That gives him a chance to... (Source)

Nicky CullenThat is such a tough question. I'm going to say The Godfather because I couldn't stop until it was finished. (Source)

Michal PtacekMy most favourite book is Godfather by Mario Puzo. I think it is even slightly more interesting and better than a movie which is almost perfect. Total masterpiece :) (Source)

Igor DebaturQuestion: What five books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path & why? Answer: The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche The Castle by Franz Kafka 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Source)

Lucy AtkinsWhat I adore about the book is how brilliantly she explores the idea of moral grey areas. (Source)

Simon BrettI think Ripley just set so many characters in motion because he was one of the first entirely amoral central figures, someone who commits appalling crimes and murders but you actually feel a kind of sympathy for. (Source)

Malcolm GladwellAmerican medicine, Being Mortal reminds us, has prepared itself for life but not for death. This is Atul Gawande's most powerful--and moving--book. (Source)

Barack ObamaPresident Obama is spending his Hawaiian vacation playing golf, getting together with high school friends and reading a handful of dark novels set in foreign lands, according to a book list released by the White House Wednesday. The presidential reading list includes [...] two works of non-fiction for the trip: [...] "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End" by Dr. Atul Gawande. (Source)

Indra NooyiJust finished "Being Mortal" by Atul Gawande. A beautifully written book. Captivating. (Source)

Gavin KnightIt’s true that the numbers killed by the Camorra are so much greater than anything in Britain. Also the way people are killed and disposed of is different and much more brutal. There is also the pervasive influence of the mafia in southern Italy, especially when it comes to the dumping of toxic waste. (Source)

Tim ParksOf all the books that I have selected…this is the easiest to read as a novel and it’s the one that has the classic novel plot that will engage even the most ardent lovers of popular fiction. (Source)

Simon MawerThis is one of the greatest books that I know. It is beautifully done. There is an anonymous narrator who is clearly based on Giorgio Bassani’s own experiences. Again, it is an oblique look at the fate of European Jews. (Source)

Rosie BlauIt’s the story of a newspaper founded in Rome in the 1950s and we see the lives of 11 different people who work on the paper. It’s just fantastic. (Source)

Robert CottrellThe book is a fictional history of the International Herald Tribune. All the characters are clichés of one sort or another, by intention. (Source)

Neal O'GormanCertainly, a previous non-business book which I really enjoyed (along with many other people) was the Da Vinci Code. I was living in the States at the time, and it was a rare occasion to be on a plane and not see someone reading it. (Source)

Tim ParksLet’s make a quick comment about Svevo. Svevo was not his real name. His real name was Schmitz and he grew up as a German speaker in the area of Trieste where there was a big linguistic mix, so Italian was his second language. He had written a number of books which he self-published, which was quite common at that time, and received no attention at all really, so he was a failure in that regard.... (Source)

David GrossmanMorante opposes the anonymity of war—the war of masses, states, armies, troops and she commits us to the individual (Source)

Mark ZuckerbergOh, it’s not a favorite book or anything like that, I just added it because I liked it. I don’t think there’s any real significance to the fact that it’s listed there and other books aren’t. But there are definitely books—like the Aeneid—that I enjoyed reading a lot more. (Source)

Ryan HolidayI made an effort to read some classical poets and playwrights this year. The Aneiad was far and away the most quotable, readable and memorable of all of them. There’s no other way to put: the story is AMAZING. Better than the Odyssey, better than Juvenal’s Satires. Inspiring, beautiful, exciting, and eminently readable, I loved this. I took more notes on it that I have on anything I’ve read in a... (Source)

Ted TurnerWhen I got to college, I was a classics major, and that was mainly the study of Greek - and to a lesser extent Roman - history and culture, and that fascinated me: the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid by Virgil. (Source)

Arnold SchwarzeneggerThere’s one book that I’ve given that it was just Christmas, that I’ve given away a lot of copies. This is a book about Winston Churchill by Boris Johnson. A very talented guy. (Source)

Benedict KingJohnson’s thesis is that Churchill may have had faults and made mistakes, but on all the big issues he called it right and that, as a politician, he had a unique combination of personal qualities – bravery, industry, eloquence and, when necessary, ruthlessness – that put him in a league of his own. The subtext bubbles up from every page: The Churchill Factor: Why I Have it in Spades. (Source)

Stuart ClarkDava ostensibly wrote a book about Galileo’s relationship with his daughter but actually it reveals a lot about Galileo and science along the way. (Source)

Robert GreeneA few of my favorite bios for the new book. #whatimreading (Source)