At sixty-six, Lorenzo Carcaterra finds it easier to reflect on the past than ruminate on the future. "By the time you reach my age," he writes, "you have witnessed too much loss to not be aware of what lies ahead." This turn to the past inspired a poignant memoir about the women who made him the man he is today. His Italian grandmother, Nonna Maria, gave him his first taste of a loving home during the summers he spent with her as a teenager on Ischia,...

"After finishing his powerful memoir The Return, Hisham Matar, seeking solace and pleasure, traveled to Siena, Italy. Always finding comfort and clarity in great art, Matar immersed himself in eight significant works from the Sienese School of painting, which flourished from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Artists whom he had admired throughout his life, such as Duccio and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, evoke earlier engagements he has had with works...

"In this exquisite and profound memoir, a medieval historian traces her lifelong obsession with Rome and the encounters with the city's past and present that became fulcrum points in her life From the time she first felt called to its gates as a high school student fascinated by Dante and Italian thanks to a life-changing teacher, Rome has been a fixed star around which Alizah Holstein's life has rotated-despite the fact that she bears no Italian...

Venice, 2020. As a pandemic rages across the globe, Zito Madu finds himself in a nearly deserted city, its walls and basilicas humming with strange magic. As he wanders a haunted landscape, we see him twist further into his own past: his family's difficult immigration from Nigeria to Detroit, his troubled relationship with his father, the sporadic joys of daily life and solitude, his experiences with migration, poverty, foreignness, racism, and his...

"The beloved New York Times bestselling author shares a treasure trove of insight and guidance from her two grandmothers-time-tested common sense advice on the most important aspects of a woman's life, from childhood to old age.".

The Plunkett's defining moment was at Anzio, where a dozen-odd German bombers bore down on the ship in an assault so savage, so prolonged, and so deadly that one Navy commander was hard-pressed to think of another destroyer that had endured what Plunkett had. After a three-month overhaul Plunkett (DD-431) plunged back into the war at Omaha Beach on D-Day, and once again into battle during the invasion of Southern France-- perhaps the only Navy ship...

"More than the story of a single, savage engagement, Unsinkable traces the individual journeys of five men on one ship from Casablanca in North Africa, to Sicily and Salerno in Italy and then on to Plunkett's defining moment at Anzio, where a dozen-odd German bombers bore down on the ship in an assault so savage, so prolonged, and so deadly that one Navy commander was hard-pressed to think of another destroyer that had endured what Plunkett had. After...