Getting It Right in Italy: Manual for the 1990s

By William Ward

This practical guide to business and pleasure in Italy aims to provide inside information and detailed assistance in understanding the people and the country. Suggestions include what to wear to a business meeting or a wedding, how to rent a flat, how to get into art galleries when they are shut, how to chat up an Italian girl and the easiest way to get rid of an Italian boy who will not go away.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0747505748
• ISBN13: 9780747505747
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Ltd
• Length: 608 Pages
• Weight: 0.93 lbs.
• Dimensions: 5.9" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Accuracy incarnate!

This is an old book which when written contained some of the most useful and (at that time) relevant information about modern Italy to be found anywhere. Not for the romanticists dreaming of Tuscan villas and al fresco dining amongst vines and olives trees with little trattoria and central casting Italian peasants handy......this book told it like it was, with dazzling insight and clarity. It's no travel guide. It's a step by step textbook to help you learn how to make sense of a contradictory and paradoxical nation of people for whom style and public appearance are second only to family and food. It revealed the insecurity, the duality, the manifestly narcissistic and self-reverential side of this endlessly fascinating nation. At the same time, it showed how modern Italy has emerged from a post WW2 economic and social shambles into a wealthy, vigorous and justifiably proud European economic power. For the genuine Italophile who wants to do more than be a tourist or summer renter, this books helps you thoroughly understand the Italian heartbeat and get a handle on its national psyche and ultimately, to see why this country works the way it does. This book still has some value today, but it is also sadly out of date. If only William Ward were able to refresh and revise his excellent work. However, lacking anything better to have been published since, this could still be the foundation for a modern day manual for 'Getting it Right in Italy.