Product Description: Despite what would seem some apparent likenesses, single men and single women are perceived in very different ways. Bachelors are rarely considered "lonely" or aberrant. They are not pitied. Rather, they are seen as having chosen to be "footloose and fancy free" to have sports cars, boats, and enjoy a series of unrestrictive relationships...read more

Offers the autobiographical writings, diary entries, selected letters, and ecstatic utterances of Gemma Galgani, the first person who lived into the twentieth century to be canonized as a saint, as well as an examination of the Italian laywoman's life and work. (view table of contents)

Product Description: How to Do It shows us sixteenth-century Italy from an entirely new perspective: through manuals which were staples in the households of middlebrow Italians merely trying to lead better lives. Addressing challenges such as how to conceive a boy, the manuals offered suggestions such as tying a tourniquet around your husband's left testicle...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Examines the lives of over two hundred holy women who lived in Italy between 1200 and the present, and argues that many saints suffered from anorexia nervosa

Product Description: The Italian peasantry has often been described as tragic, backward, hopeless, downtrodden, static, and passive. In Fate and Honor, Family and Village, Rudolph Bell argues against the characterizationmore by reconstructing the complete demographic history of four country villages since 1800...read more