[ExI] authors, italian and otherwise

[spike]

Friends,
 
A recent discussion here resulted in my commenting to a friend offlist that
everything I know about Italy I learned from reading Mario Puzo's excellent
early novel The Fortunate Pilgrim.  Then I realized how dumb that musta
sounded: Puzo was born in America, and the novel is about an American
childhood in an Italian neighborhood.  So I still don't know anything about
Italy.
 
Question please: if you wished to explain your native culture to someone
outside, which book would you recommend and why?  This question is not what
is your favorite book, or what explains transhumanism etc.  Rather, if you
wanted to explain your native land and culture for instance, which book or
which author?  Tomasz for instance, would you recommend Michener's Poland?
 
USians, you get to play too.  Personally I am a huge fan of Steinbeck, but
his stuff is dated now, having pretty much ended in the 1960s.  His Travels
With Charley is a great 1960s book.
 
Websites are OK too, in fact preferrable in some important ways.
 
spike
 
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20100517/d1395058/attachment.html>