Pigeons in the Piazza, CL

Price: $30.00

Description

This absorbing book by Dial Parrott shows how history and culture are as essential to travel in Italy as a daily scoop of gelato. Its narrative spine is a three-week sojourn to Venice, Tuscany, and Umbria by the author, his wife Sally, and their pre-school sons, Sam (six) and Max (four). Always informative and at times deliciously funny, it also contains Parrott’s urgent memories of his youth in the Mississippi Delta during the birth of the civil rights movement. Among many other things, the Italian chapters recount the heedless joys of Venice, the excitement of a reckless bareback horse race around Siena’s central Campo, the pageantry of an ancient crossbow tournament in Gubbio, the prodigal, rebellious youth of Saint Francis of Assisi, and the day terrorists set off a huge car bomb beside the Uffizi art museum in Florence. The Mississippi chapter contains vivid scenes from an epic struggle pitting black and white citizens against the forces of an entrenched police state. Superbly illustrated with 110 photographs and maps, most in color.