READING LIST , ITALY 2016 TEMPLE TRAVELS

If you are interested in reading or viewing something before you go,

Mary Beard, The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found (Cambridge, MA, 2008), a lively, readable account of everyday life in the first century.

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Herculaneum: Past and Future (London, 2011), with lots of color photographs and information about recent excavations.

Tim Jepson writes the National Geographic Traveler: and Southern Italy (2011), with the usual NG beautiful pictures and short essays on history and culture.

Robert I.C. Fisher, Close to Paradise: The Gardens of Naples, and the Amalfi Coast (2011), with gorgeous pictures and a short history of the special gardens, from the Roman times to the 18 th , 19 th and 20 th centuries.

Jordan Lancaster, In the Shadow of Vesuvius (2009), a quick look over the history, art and culture of the Bay of Naples area.

Ben Taylor, Naples Declared: A Walk Around the Bay (2013), a travelogue that encompasses art, culture, and history.

Although the translation is a little odd, Paolo Rubino’s The Wonders of the Amalfi Coast: and Capri, Ischia, Naples, Pompeii, Sorrento (2010) is a picture book-with-essays written by an Italian journalist.

If you like Farley Mowat, he has a section on returning to visit Positano and the Amalfi Coast, where he fought in WWII: Aftermath: Travels in a Post-War World (2006).

If you are interested in a memoir-diary that doesn’t flinch at telling what went wrong, as well as what went right in the area in WWII, Norman Lewis, Naples ’44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy (2005).

Or, chose a memoir focusing on Grahame Greene, when he lived on Capri in the 1960s-1990s: Greene on Capri , Shirley Hazzard (2001).

Or Axel Munthe’s (1929), how he built a bird sanctuary and villa on Capri, which he loved.

For hard-core history fans, Tommaso Astarita, Between Salt Water and Holy Water: A History of Southern Italy (2005).