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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 914
EAN num: 9780140239720
ISBN number: 0140239723
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 256
Printing Date: December 01, 1994
Publishing house: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Sale Popularity Level: 492366
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Product Description:
Arousing the mind and the appetite, Nabhan tells of his adventures as he walks through northern and central Italy along a route used by St. Francis of Assisi. From his talks with peasant farmers and others rich experiences, Nabhan offers profound reflections on the spirit with precise observations of nature as well as lively asides on Italian cuisine.
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Rated by buyers 
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As a naturalist, Nabhan has a keen eye. He can assess landscapes, crops and architecture with some skill. However, he runs into trouble when he persists in judging his fellow human beings. He is highly critical of others, not at all of himself. For example, a chapter on use of corn in peasants' diet blames the consequent rise in pellagra on their failure to wash the corn in lime,as Indians did, providing calcium. The huge majority of Italiansliving in remote country areas would never have heard of this remedy, and so their failure to use it could not reasonably be blamed on ethnocentrism. It's also common for Nabham to blame the Umbrian society in which he travels for not being wild enough, remote enough. He seems to have little understanding of the desperate poverty in which isolated Umbrian communities existed in the past. He even finds fault that truffle-hunters now use dogs rather than pigs in the hunt. The explanation, a simple one, is that hunters find it easier to extract a truffle from a dog's mouth rather than wrestle it away from a 200-pound tusked boar who's determined to eat it.
Although Nabham's whole journey is supposedly focused on a pilgrimage to Assisi, when he actually gets there he is (unsurprisingly, given his character) disappointed. He even finds cause to be disgusted when a well-meaning fellow pilgrim points out the fact that there is no animal shelter of any kind in Assisi, that suffering animals are without help or protection, and that this should be remedied. Nabham's theory is that the animals should remain "wild," and he fears that they will be "tamed" if they're helped. He seems ignorant of the extent to which St. Frances, and other villagers, helped and fed the Wolf of Gubbio.
Throughout the book, Nabham refers to a painful divorce he has gone through and the extent of his suffering. By the end of the book, so self-satisfied and unreflective does he appear that the reader is firmly on the unseen ex-wife's side.
Rated by buyers -
Mr Nabhan took us on an extrardinary journey through St Francis county. Entertaining and educating on each page. Then the big let down in the epilogue, as he rejects everything St Francis stood for. St Francis loved nature and the animals, but only because they are God's creation. St Francis's every moment was spent glorifing God. He loved all animals as an extension of his love for Jesus, nothing more, nothing less. Mr Nabhan totally misread St Francis.
Rated by buyers 
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If, one week ago, someone told me that I'd be reading & loving a book subtitled "An American Naturalist in Italy," I'd have laughed.
This is a witty and charming book (a very quick read) which will get to you even if you are NOT a naturalist---even if, like I, you hardly know what a naturalist is or does!
Nabhan, with a friend, hiked through the Tuscan and Umbrian countryside, interviewing natives and chronicling his discoveries and stories: an old farmer shares wine and his knowledge of how to find truffles simply because Nabhan was walking to Assisi and the farmer was named after Saint Francis; an elderly couple waltzes in a town square and becomes, in Nabhan's words, "the dance, itself;" another man explains to the author why grapes need to be trellised & how beautiful they are when alternated with maples; a woman explains how a she-wolf was tamed and fed by town residents. The tales are all about the land and the people who have lived there for centuries. And they are all fascinating.....simple, true stories that will help one believe, again, in the human race.
This book is a perfect companion to that other fine book of Italian (i.e. human) discovery: "Under The Tuscan Sun" by Frances Mayes.
Rated by buyers -
I'm ordering several copies to give as gifts!
This book touched my heart.
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