Il Prete dei Fucili si Confessa by Antonio Mandrelli

Priest Antonio Mandrelli, 85 years, was born in Umbria. He serves the countryside churches of a little town called Pietralunga.

This priest became litterally famous after that, two years ago some burglars entered in his prestbytery stoling several objects including a pistol.

The priest, reached by press, confessed that in case of new aggression would have used his guns for protecting himself, reclaiming the possibility of legitimate defense.

It was a crucial moment in Italy: in the Parliament there was the discussion of this law. Don Antonio Mandrelli, a priest! saying these words, became incredibly popular and everyone wanted to see him on TV shows or magazines and newsmagazine. He became a real character.

Last may Antonio Mandrelli published a little book of memories, "Il Prete dei Fucili si Confessa"

and few days ago presented me a copy. While he was autographing it, Antonio told me: "I will be interviewd by Barbara D'Urso. Do you know her?" I told him I can see that she is a beautiful woman.

You'll read this book pretty quickly; 38 pages, plenty of illustrations of his existence, the one of Antonio the so-called "Priest of the Guns." 

Love, agriculture, friends, church priesthood, celibacy, Antonio spaces a lot sometimes with revolutionary ideas and strong, always strong, ideas.

You can feel, reading this little book the fragilities of this man of church, his anxieties, because don Antonio, at the end will embrace God and the church, becoming priest, but remaining alone, without a companion and several children and a feminine presence has been, absolutely his biggest regret.

Antonio reclaims his human weaknesses, his being first of all a man and then a priest: in the book he will let us know which had been  his flirts, loves, imaginary girlfriends, all of them sacrificed because of the church. Don Antonio has alweays been unsecure regarding what he wanted to be in his life: he decided to study for another degree because he wanted to teach as well. This one was his plan B. If his body would have been too weak for resisting the temptations, he would have left the church having a good job. 

A simple and complicated man at the same time, Antonio Mandrelli tells anedocts of the countrysides populated by a lot of families with communists ideas. It was the normality in the past, and Antonio, anyway, has never experienced problems with anyone.

He has strong ideas on the church. Brief prayers, concreets, he disagrees with the final part of the Holy Father, changed recently; he opens to women and men interested in entering in the church as priests. At the moment, remarks the priest, it's quiet impossible for a married man to become a diacon, or, at least, very difficult.

He feels a lot of melancholy for his parents with which he shared twenty-four years of his existence: an existence less wild, less vagabond. 

Past and future of the agriculture: being a truffles seeker, Antonio thinks that it is not possible to continue in this way and that the real seekers of truffles should respect, thanks to new modalities, fields and forests preserving and helping financially the owners of that fields and forests.

This book is available at FOTOLITO 90, Città di Castello.

E-mail info@fotolito90.com.

Price:12 euro.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Cueilleur d' Essence Aux Sources des Parfums du Monde by Dominique Roques

When  I picked up Cueilleur d' Essence

Aux Sources des Parfums du Monde by Dominique Roques released by Grasset I did it because being not just a journalist and book blogger, but also an Yves Rocher seller, I was curious to discover the world of fragrances, essences and what there is in the between. Yes, because a perfume means after all the magic combination of several essences, mixed together, chosen carefully for a satisfying result.

Well: this book was much much more than what I thought. 

First of all I discovered that the world of perfume is dreaming, relaxing, calm, agitated, colored, exotic; distant lands, smells, fragrances, good food, traditions, friendship, smiles, laughed, beauty passing through nature and the enchantment that the world present us everyday. When we buy a bottle of perfume we buy the world; we can see through the transparent liquid the work of gipsies, removing rose petals from a rose plantation; strong women in Andalouise; we see through it the smile of satisfied, tired people after a long work-day in the beauty and in the essences, under, most of the time, a beautiful warm sun, resting in company with a good launch; there is satisfaction and pride, there is the desire of giving the best, all the time and there is the certainty of a land, distant or close to us, that wants to offer the best.

The world of perfume speak many languages, shake a lot of hands, has many colors; it is a world that, in this case, is cleaned, is poetic, is immersed in the culture of the land; sometimes there are essences not just used internationally, but known internally because of cultural, religious purposes. An essence means sometimes legend, tradition; some examples? The sandal, the incense.

We will go in Andalouise, at first, where it is cultivated in summer the ciste, with its strong, hypnotical essence, this one is researched in particular for Chanel n.5. People of Andalouise are people who wants to make feast, staying all together for a big luncheon; they love their cultivation, they invest time and money for this purpose women, are intrigued by the final product and what it will become.

Then follow me, Dominique will spend some time and pages in Provence, famous for lavender and more recently for lavandine. There are distinctions: plantations of lavandine are particular of flat places; lavander can be found in hills, mountains, mainly. In the past there was a massive cultivation of lavender. Lavender: my favorite one! When I go to sleep I add some drops of eau de cologne in the cushion; the author has memory of his time spent in the big house of her granny in Provence during the summer-time, and the strong, fascinating fragrance of furnitures, rooms plenty of lavender. It is not simple to discover or obtain the best lavender and big maisions of perfumes are extremely exigent; they want the best and just the best of the flowers.

Same is for other essences. Dominque tells his adventure with the Rose of Bulgarie. Bulgarie was a land famous for the rose essence and in the past was the main productor; then they lost this prerogative; once Dominque visited the land, slowly slowly the situation returned to be as florid as it was in the past.

I was so surprised to discover that in Reggio Calabria, Italy, at the border with Sicily, there is a big plantation of bergamot and that the city can be proud of it. Gianfranco would want the bridge connecting Sicily with Calabria. Maybe it won't remain just a dream

Sri Lanka, tea apart, is famous because of cinnamon. The country is tribulated, because of wars, because of terrorist attacks and because of the Tsunami; so the land is in turmoil; but no one would say this, observing the beautiful plantation of cinnamon, teas everywhere and the calm that they present.

In Madagascar Dominque will explain you the powerful essence of vanille, one of the most used, and loved essences, revealing you also the birth of vanilla; you will discover that Madagascar produces the 80% of all the vanille that there is in commerce, including the one called "Bourbon", so yummu! You musn't never think for a second that this commerce hasn't known crisis, because it had for several reasons.

Indonesie is famous for its patchouli: Dominque is giving new energy at this important, crucial essence.

Dominque asks to himself if the state of things will remain this one considering the climate changes, desertifications, fires. I hope that the magic of essences won't never be over. It's too beauty!

You'll find history of countries, people, essences. You'll notice that you'll start to see the sun that Dominique is seeing, and that you can visualize all the beauty of this world thanks to his words in a book that will simply enchant, bewitch you forever, as an essence does!

Highly recommended.

I thank Grasset for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

 

 

 

Ascent to Glory How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic by Alvaro Santana-Acuna

 Ascent to Glory

How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic by Alvaro Santana-Acuna, is a book released by Columbia Univesity that puts in a new perspective one of the most immense and celebrated masterpiece. I didn't know the story of the gestation of this work, and what there was behind it; the realization of this book was long something like 17 years from its germinal idea. In the while, let's say something regarding Marquez. 

Born in a little place, Aracataca in Colombia, his parents would have dreamt for him a career in the law field, but Gabriel Garcia felt a strong feeling for literature, writing, journalism and although his parents were pretty upset, he decided to leave the university for starting a different existence. 

Latin America literature, before the end of the last world war conflict didn't exist; not as the one that we know at the moment. Writers afforded to Paris from Latin America didn't tend to write anything of their countries, absorbed as they were by the European existence; but one day, some of them at La Coupole in Paris, it was 1966, discussed about this new book, that had still to be released, thinking that it would have made the difference. 

Marquez was a man plenty of curiosity. He lived in different locations, afforded to Paris where he stayed for a year, then went to Italy fascinated by our cinema, and followed a course organized by Cesare Zavattini, absolutely one of the best screenwriters and not only that we have had; he loved our movies, the neorealistic ones because he thought that they had inside them both magic than realism and this mixture and combination to him was incredibly good. 

He was fascinated by Ernest Hemingway and tried to write with his same writing-style (the one of Hemingway was a big novelty in the panorama),  re-addressing himself when some friends suggested to cut here and there.

Journalist, writer, Marquez has been lucky enough with his connections. He received financial help; he wrote in several different environments and countries; and we musn't forget the groups of people created in several countries, first readers and co-creators of this novel.

These people brought suggestions, hints and whatever necessary for the creation of this masterpiece. This one is not in fact the word of a voice, but of a moltitude of voices put together.

The novel once finished was promoted pretty largely before the publication so that most people fell in love for this book before its appearance in bookstores. 

This extrraordinary publicity created a case and this case meant to Marquez the perfect condition for a strong, solid and continous success generation after generation. Enthusiasm didn't involved only Latin American countries but most european countries, interested to give space to other kind of literature apart the one known till there. 

The main problems of Latin American literature was this one: to find its voice, for telling little or big stories, its magic, its universe. Once discovered that there was more than a possibility for the realization of this goal, also "thanks" to the Spanish Civil War and the last world war, then no one would have stopped anymore the fertility of a land that has a lot to tell to the humanity thanks to its suggestions.

When the book appeared, didn't meet a lot of competition; so thanks to the publicity we said before, at the arrival in the bookstores, the magic was complete.

Who was in the USA the first believer in Latin American literature? Faulkner. Faulkner was a great great passionate of Latin America literature also because he loved their language and...didn't like english! He translated wagons of spanish books and under many ways, was helpful for a healthy promotion of the works of Latin America literature. 

The USA, with Faulkner had an important voice who made the difference in the  

panorama and that could give a new perspective for the book market enlarging the book production available with the introducing of new visions of the world.

A big role for the novel was played by reviewers and reviews published months and months before the appearance in the market of the product. 

In general opinions were very good: some of them remarked the classicism of the work, or the non-originality. Other ones, following what said Marquez thought that was also a humorous book, but later, once analyzed much better, the direction taken was completely different, and a gravity descended on it.

Sure this novel is a novel without...borders, because the creation of this book has been done collectively after all, and it is one of that rare experiments where collectivity create a masterpiece. It's not yet clear for example when was invented the first phrase of the novel's opening's sentence. Where was the author when he wrote it? and Marquez was discordant also when offered other versions of the creation of the rest of the book.

Cultural brokers, directly, or indirectly played a big role for the birth of this novel and for its international success; later these brokers meant a lot also for the creation of a solid base that would have established One Hundreds Years of Solitude as a classic. But...How a book becomes a classic? Is there a magical recipe? No, of course. Each book has a different history but in this case a great work has been the one of repetition or reinvention of myths and certain thematic contained in the book: also with the conception, publication, writing compared with other novels.

I can tell you that, if reading this book, you search for the story, realization of One Hundreds Years of Solitude, when you will read for the first time  the novel or, you'll read it again, conscious of the process making, you'll live the reading in a completely differently way.

Stimulating, very informative, beautiful book!

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Pandemic! Covid-19 Shakes the World by Slavoj Zizek

 Pandemic!

Covid-19 Shakes the World by Slavoj Zizek is a book released by Polity Books treating the current period (first phase and wave, Italy was in lockdown) we are all experiencing. Social distancing, an enemy we can't touch but that it is incredibly visible and.."alive" in bodies of people and that it is causing a lot of death and sufferance.

A pandemic means a shock: a social, political, economical, psychological shock, because the rules are not anymore dictated by a government of a state, but by a virus and the behavior of the citizens. There is a constant, enormous, fear, panic, uncertainty in a pandemic time.

As reflects Zizek there won't be any return to normality, but the new normality that will be built under the maceries of this pandemic will be for sure a new one.

If we won't do that, a new barbarism will start to take place.

And...Another question: why America and Europe were so unprepared although rich countries to this shock, when previsions said that a new pandemic would have affected the world soon? 

Zizek starting from the experience of Li Wenliang, the doctor of 37 years who denounced the silence of chinese authorities regarding the severe outbreak of COVID-19 and his following death concludes with a phrase of Martin Luther King: "We maybe have all come on different ships, but we are in the same boat now." 

It is true: Covid-19 doesn't respect anyone; it kills the rich and the poor, the beauty and the ugly. Everyone. And it becomes incredibly strong, joyous and happy when people spend time together.

That one is its strength. Only that one. In opposite case, it would remain a solitary virus, without consistency. But this virus knows something: that people can't stay always all alone and there, joyously he kills and let us suffer.

This one is not a healthy society, adds Zizek, but a society pretty tired, by dues, by that being masters and slaves at the same time, without adding that the globalization is the main cause of social distress. 

COVID-19 pandemic is keeping this state of things pretty worrying;  not everyone stay at home for smart-working: there is a large part of population who is forced to go outside, in an unsafe world where the risk, at the moment, of catching the virus is very high.

The situation of the world is not the happiest one at the moment: there is not just COVID-19 but climate changes as well! and we are experiencing phaenomenon always seen in the world but with more prepotency: floods, hurricanes, quakes and other different disasters.

Our perception of body is changed: for reasons that we all know we must avoid to touch our face, nose, ears, cleaning hands compulsively and wherever we go, we can't shake hand anymore, we can't hug, we can't kiss anyone. We can't let show to anyone our affection for prudency.

We learned to control and discipline ourselves writes Zizek.

These past years, reflects Zizek, only the internet and its explosion presented us, in particular with Windows the problematic of viruses of various sorta. If in our part of the world we experienced only online stress, in other part of the world the explosion of COVID-19 has been lived as another "plague" close to other ones, (certain countries are effected by more than an epidemic per time) in particular in Africa.

The explosion of places where people have fun all together, so parks at theme, or also cruise ships let us rethink at the system created in our past society...A society where people had to enjoy all the fun together.

Pandemic's psychological reactions have always been absolutely similar in every epidemic. There hasn't been a great differentiation in terms of behavior if we look at the past and we read what happened, and the mirror we observes today.

There is denial, anger, bargaining, depression and at the end acceptance. 

In the first stage people can't recognize that there is a problem (I met several people in that phase and they are now the most worried ones), there is anger, when it is understandable that the peril is close to us, but also the dream that the problem can be attenuated or sorted out, for then experiencing depression and acceptance.

A new form of living must be created, helped by a new Communism tells Zizek, if not, Zizek writes a future could be this one:  "We stay at home, work on our computers, communicate through video-conferences, exercise on a machine in the corner of our home office, occasionally masturbate in front of a screen displaying hard core sex , and got food delivery never seeing other human beings in person." Scaring.

For sure panic is a condition that we started to know well. My mother is taking some drops every night because the entire situation scared her to death although we live in a countryside.

The fear of the unknown; the idea that what it is told can be a lie, or just, the enormity of the problem in particular for people who remembers the last Second World War Conflict and thinks that this virus, keeping people isolated, is worse than a war.

But... After all...Isn't it a war this one?

A war that can't be defeated egoistically but through global solidariety and cooperation "in the interest and survival of of all of each of us" writes Zizek.

The situation experienced in the first wave,  when in hospitals sometimes nurses and doctors chose who put in ICU "removing" from the list the oldest, and sickest ones. Isn't this one a situation that potentially can open up the space for immense corruption, asks Zizek.

 

Italy has been in a general lockdown, and that lockdown brought things under control for circa two months. Virus circulated but was more lazy thanks to the general lockdown.

It is a historical fact this one: for killing or for put under control a state, a city during an epidemic the only real measure that can save wagons of existences are lockdowns.

China remembers still the lessons learned when Watson closed an entire village in 1917, affected by a weird flu, dedicating to him an hospital.

Zizek speaks of the elite, living well and maybe like the protagonists of the Decameron by Boccaccio who lived somewhere for escaping the new wave of plague, telling to each other stories of various genre for passing the time.

Sure: during a pandemic normality is strongly altered. We live, also when the peak is reached in a constant situation of peril; there is not anymore the relaxation of the past; because we still know that the virus is there.

A virus: what is a virus if not a parasite, write Zizek? An entity close to a vampire, a parasite, yes! It couldn't live if he wouldn't enter in the body of someone replicating itself creating in most cases important illnesses or the death. It doesn't exist and exists, prepotently; it can be classified a "silly virus" because it can be killed cleaning hands with alcohol, cleaning surfaces with simplicity, it doesn't resist high temperatures because and of course, it doesn't enter, as said one day by a virologist through the walls of the houses. So, you must catch it somewhere meeting someone.

I smiled when I read what Zizek wrote: he said he would have wanted to catch the virus so that the uncertainty would be over. It happens the same to me. 

I wanted to see if I catched COVID-19 so that I would have been immune but no, I did a sierologic exam and it was negative.

And yes, I know what it means experiencing nightmares of various sorta, COVID related. You dream virologists, politicians, doctors, you dream COVID, in general you are sick or other people are sick and so what to do?

But I find, for example more simple at the moment sleeping, because dreams changed for good after a while; I find more difficult  coping with the day, when from the beginning to the end the main mantra is COVID-19 and who is sick today, and what will happen tomorrow? I tell the truth: that the fact Italy reopens put me is a big stress. Last year we were in lockdown and I experienced great relaxation because I knew that we were safe. This year is the opposite...

So, you imagine when you will return to the city, jumping here and there, avoiding human contacts, staying safe....It's not a joke. Plus of course, the uncertainty of the future, how this society will change, because I am honest, I hadn't seen a great society in the pre-pandemic world. No.

This pandemic is a medical, economic and psychological emergence.

Kant once said speaking to the laws of a state: "Obey, but think, maintain the freedom of thought."

To Zizec passing through the public is crucially important, because we understood that the past system built couldn't be inclusive with everyone and important decisions must be taken for avoid any kind of social intense di-stress that could bring people to desperation.

Transfunctionalitation is an extreme measure for helping societies and privates; it permits to the economy running and to prevent extreme poverty and starvation.

Beautiful book, you'll read it in a few hours. There is a new book Pandemic 2, written by the same Zizek. Stay tuned. I will post the review I hope in a couple of weeks.

Highly recommended.

I thank Polity Books for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

La Constellation Rimbaud by Jean Rouaud

 La Constellation Rimbaud

by Jean Rouaud, published by Editions Grasset is a tribute to one of the most beloved poets of all the times: Arthur Rimbaud and the people who gravitated around him during his brief passage in this world. 

The book analyzes several cities Arthur touched or lived in, and in each city-chapter there is the punctual reconstruction for the joy of the readers of the people with which Arthur Rimbaud interacted with like also the experiences made in the while; the poetic experience was just a little part of an itinerant existence; at the end he was in grade of speaking something like 13-14 languages, including old latin and greek! Amazing mind.

He was a genius! there is nothing else to add; one of his teachers understanding the enormous potentialities of this still little boy added that nothing, but only good stuff would have been written by him. 

And it was true. Born in Charleville, his father was in the army but he was in love for writing, although what composed was mainly military stuff. 

It is supposed that this passion for writing was inherited by this vacant father, who had impregnanted the wife five times but that later neglected completely his family. Once separated he won't return anymore at Charleville. 

The mother, La Mother, as Arthur called her, was pretty ambitious regarding his son but also tender or firm, experiencing for three times the departure of a child: the last time with Arthur, when he tragically died.

Charleville like Stratford-Upon-Avon is a city, thanks to Rimbaud, world patrimony of poetry and it is in the college of this city that Arthur started his studies with his sibling Frederic. Ernest Delahaye will soon become close friend of him remaining bewitched by this boy like also Georges Izambard a pretty young teacher of rethoric; later Georges lived the misadventure of becoming deaf and was constricted to abandoning the school.

The first prize won by Rimbaud because of poetry is precocious; Arthur started to compose when in his teen-age age in fact. Then he would have wanted to launch himself in the journalism but this time without great luck.

He thought that journalism could be a good path; the wrinkled reality "la realité rugueuse"called this activity (he was right!) and confessed to his close friend Izabard that his idea would have been the one to afford to Paris for becoming a journalist. 

Oh, you musn't think that his first "meeting" with this big city and capital of France has been brilliant, for many reasons; he was put in jail because discovered ticketless in the train he had catched the first time; then bypassing his second trip, Verlaine requested him to Paris; at the arrival the first person Arthur noticed to the train station waiting for him was Mathilda, the wife of Verlaine; Mathilda noticed immediately that Rimbaud appeared like a miserable boy, dirty, pretty disordinated and didn't like this way of living and being; at home as well. Then, of course when she understood the real relationship that there was between his man and that boy, tried all her best for not losing Paul Verlaine; but, in vain. Later, Mathilde Mauté moved on and re-built her existence with other people.

Verlaine brought Rimbaud to London where it was possible to breath an international atmosphere. If Paris was the center of culture and literature, London was vice-versa projected in business, policy. Rimbaud was tendentially a communist, an anarchist, someone who wanted a different world. 

He thought that the modernity had precipitated the world in a state where the absence of poetry would have been a natural consequence. Marx emigrated in London, but also Engels,  Tissot, Pissarro and many more.

In Paris apart Verlaine with which he will live the love-story till at 1873, a connection never ended (when Rimbaud died Verlaine was one of the biggest divulgators of the poems written by his beloved Arthur) Rimbaud met inventors, but also people like Cabaner, bohemienne character with a high percentage of alcohol in his body.

Cabaner was well introduced: he knew well Renoir, Manet, Cezanne, Degat, Monet. Original man he pretended of learning music with the method he had invented: associating notes with...colors. 

Etienne Carjat had an atelier of photography. 

In Bruxelles the big drama of this sad, disastrous love-story; discovering that Rimbaud wanted to leave him Verlaine one day found a gun and tried to kill him. He was put in jail for two years. In the while Rimbaud decided that the best thing to do, after all, was to return to London; alone; but... look at the destiny, close to l'Odeon he met Germain Nouveau, a young boy, great admirer of his poems; he wanted to join him. The story of Germain is interesting.

Poet and painter, he studied at a seminary, but later decided to move on; he walked all alone for the entire European Continent learning many languages. Germain loved to study and understood very well old latin and greek.

The existence with this boy will bring him a lot of changes. Rimbaud at some point will cut completely all his long hair! 

Rimbaud tired of his existence after a while decides of joining the french army; once abandoned it, wrote to the American Consulate asking to join the American navy, but being a diserter, he specified it, no one wrote him back. 

 

I asked to myself why this drastic decision, why this radical change: maybe he felt that he wanted to live an existence thinking less and experiencing more; maybe he was simply tired; geniality brings with it these characteristics. 

Rimbaud after his first existence as poet, lived in exotic places, was in the army as said before as also his father (and he was a pacifist) lost his right leg and, after several terribe months of agony in Marseille, his existence. He was  still in his late thirties.

An existence the one of Arthur, exotic, fascinating, plenty of distant lands and adventures, with many sounds, words, perfumes, visions, faces, cultural enrichments. 

A book for all that people intrigued by the poet and what happened to this iconic symbol of french and world poetry. Very good for students in search of a good text for a thesys.

Highly recommended.

I thank Editions Grasset for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

The Covid-19 Catastrophe What's Gone Wrong and How to Stop it Happening Again Second Edition Expanded and Updated by Richard Horton

 The Covid-19 

Catastrophe What's Gone Wrong and How to Stop it Happening Again Second Edition Expanded and Updated by Richard Horton is the best book on Covid that you can find around. Written by the editor of Lancet, with competence but also with highly fruibility, this reading will reach every citizen of this world and every reader. You won't find too many specialistic terms that will frustrate you; the narration is absolutely captivating, let me use this term.

When on january 2020 the news of a severe weird, uncommon unresponsive to the common therapies, pneumonia interested in that first dramatic outbreak the city of Wuhan, in the province of Hubei, China, I immediately understood that this one would have been our pandemic. I couldn't believe that it would have stayed isolated in China or other close asian countries. 

The echo of Spanish Flu, the echoes of past pestilences became strong also if we hadn't directly lived them. 

A city with 11-12 million, didn't leave chance for a different scenario.

My readings on this topic were pretty fresh: months before the outbreak of Wuhan I read the book by Laura Spinney: Pale Rider. The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World and just ten days before the discovery of the chinese outbreak I posted my review on Viral Modernism by Elizabeth Outka. 

I recognized the danger and till then I tried to communicate the importance of knowledge, sharing good informations for staying vigilant, and alert.

We can avoid this pestilence with proper behaviors and isolation. The price is big, but it would be better not catch this virus.

Said this, Horton opens the book with a consideration: we avoided a pandemic with the direct "cousin" of this horrible virus: Sars-Cov-1, SARS on 2002-2003. There were many deaths but the illness remained confined in certain countries of the world. It was a lesson well learned by China, this time quick in the response wth the international organisms.

Coronavirus are pretty known viruses because they are good friends with various mammals, man included, and in general they cause cold. The commistion of this virus with another animal created this "jump" of quality and the first mutation in something else: a pestilence.

First of all: COVID will remain? And: is it just a pandemic? A pandemic flu arrives, kill and then slowly disappears. The virus of the Spanish flu circulated till 1923, but killed 50-100 million of people during the first year of its existence. 

No: the COVID-19 is not a common pandemic writes Horton. 

Why this? 

From the book: 

"The reality is that two categories of disease are interacting together and within specific populations: infection with a coronavirus is causing particular harm among those who are older and those who are living with chronic disease, such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension. Worse, these interactions are clustering within particular social group according to patterns of inequality deeply embedded within our societes." 

Horton classifies COVID-19 a syndemic, or said differently: a syntehsis of epidemics. 

"A much more nuance approach is needed if we are to protect the health of our communities" writes Horton.

Reducing chronic illnesses is a first step for arresting the prepotent aggressivity of COVID in our society.

Every pandemic is similar or different to the other ones experienced in the past: in this sense Horton takes in consideration  the book by Daniel Defoe: A Journal of the Plague Year: it describes the behavior of the population: what happened in 2020 is similar: there was the initial enthusiasm of people confined at home; later this confinement was lived, when a second, third wave arrived with powerful intolerance; this lack of freedom meant and means the desire to return to the normality. 

Feelings that we are proving are normals. But this one is not a normal phase of our existence:  this one is an exceptional moment: I heard people saying that these ones are stolen years for youngs and adults.

No one is stealing years; they are just different years because of the exceptionality of the moment. It's important to understand this.

But...Which was the answer of the several countries and continents in the world when they firstly approached COVID-19?

China understood that this one was a powerful treat for the world and offered immediately all the possible knowledge for describing this terrible illness.

Our Western countries, Europe and America have completely failed the approach against COVID-19 not understanding the risk that every country would have potentially experienced in a few months.

In China scientists sequenced the virus's genome, and spread the news in the entire world: they immediately let know to WHO that there was a great problem in Wuhan and possibly for the world; WHO, later communicated to all the countries of the world this serious danger. It was necessary to stay alert because there was a serious problem in China but this problem could interest also the rest of the world. 

No one understood or took in serious consideration what WHO was saying. Maybe it was just necessary to call some  doctors in China, as suggests Horton for trying to understand what it was going on; but no one did it.

Time passed by. China adopted a severe lockdown, like many other Asian countries and most of them didn't lose a lot of citizens. 

New Zealand was incredibly lucky! as it was also during the Spanish Flu, when the second wave didn't invest the country because they closed every communication with the outside world.

Europe was seeing as a horror movie what was going on in China. 

UK with Boris Johnson lived tragic moments, because Johnson didn't believe at the arrival of a pandemic: he thought that it wasn't a risk for the population. He wanted to keep the country completely opened permitting the so-called herd immunity. Then he fell ill, understood the lesson and, too late, took all the possible measures for containing what it was more than a wave: the most tragic event experienced in recent decades by UK.

In Europe countries were not prepared by the arrival of a pandemic: there weren't sufficient intensive care unit beds for these special patients (they are infected and they can't stay with common patients, exactly like is infected a corpse of a man or woman dead because of COVID-19)  and what was noticed was also the absence of any kind of personal protection: 

Italy was the first country heavily touched by the first wave. A case, Mattia Maestri was discovered in february 20-21 in the little town of Codogno, Lombardia and three towns, more or less immediately ten, were closed: Lombardia became a red zone, entering in lockdown. But soon the dramatic discovery: the first dead of Sars-Cov-2, was in Vò Euganeo, Veneto. Adriano Trevisan was a man of 77 years  in love for bars and friends. To the hospital  for a pneumonia, he didn't answer well at any kind of treatment. After ten days, the test and the discovery of the positivity. The hospital was completely in shock: they knew what it would have meant...

The country was put in a general lockdown by our premier Giuseppe Conte at the beginning of march and stayed closed till at the beginning of may. It was clear in fact, that the virus didn't just enter with prepotence in Northern Italy, but that was circulating in the entire italian territory. 

Le Marche, a region in the center of Italy never too mentioned in this drama lost more than 1000 people in the only city of Pesaro during the first wave.

Spain and France followed the same example seen in the rest of Europe; other countries, the ones of North of Europe choose of not impose a lockdown; they just alerted, highly warming their populations that maybe it was better to staying at home, considering what was happening in the rest of the world. 

USA lived an hallucinated moment: Donald Trump was the President at that time and didn't believe at all at the arrival of a pestilence, so he strongly suggested to everyone of not wearing masks, not cleaning hands and not keeping social distancing; he also suggested to people of drinking, well, substances pretty dangerous. Some people following the President's advice, lost their existences.

Other ones, fanatics of Trumps, organized big luncheons with their entire families, falling sick; some of them died. Trump insisted all the rest of his presidency with this behavior. He was in contrast with Anthony Fauci, he rejected WHO, removing the USA from this important international organism with strong stress for the world as well. He catched the virus, but continued to play the role of the strong man. Most people at the White House fell sick because social distances not respected and most of that people did not wear masks! 

The new President Biden, air is changed! has vaccinated more than 100 million Americans. The USA are trying to stop, under many ways, this virus and its demoniac variants, but their losses are immense in terms of human beings dead because of COVID-19 and the only economy that it is going on well is the chinese one.

Bolzonaro the leader of Brazil is another populist. He doesn't believe at this virus, he hasn't adopted any kind of measure for stopping COVID and Brazil has been one of the countries more devastated by COVID-19.

The same situation has been lived in UK  with more than 130.000 dead, Italy with more than 102.000.

Why all these numbers? In countries where there are democracies, in countries where there is after all richness and possibility of good answers?

A study, apart political choices made, established that maybe our populations are more susceptible to infections than other parts of the world. 

Vaccines: they are indispensibles and 15 billion of doses will be necessary for covering the entire world and population.

Till at that moment, distant, in which all the world will be immunized, it will be indispensible wearing masks, keeping social distancing and cleaning hands wherever you go, whaterver you touch. We must remember that this first COVID, the one from Wuhan, China, changed with the time and not for better: there are aggressive variants, the British one, the Brazilian; they both responds well to the vaccine; then we have the Nigerian one, and many more variants; some of these ones can't be traced by common tests.

The story of the Biontech told by Horton the society that, in partnership with Pfizer created the first mRNA vaccine is beautiful; this  turkish couple developed anti-cancers viruses till at the advent of Covid.They decided of invest money in researchers for trying to find a good vaccine for the humanity. Four vaccines were developed, then they proceeded with the most secure one.

A little fragment, sequence of protein spike, an acid, the Mrna, is used in this vaccine for the creation of anti-bodies. 

When you see a coronavirus you notice that  kind of "crown." That ones are the keys, suckers! used by COVID for enter in our cells and damaging our body. 

Covid-19 is not an influenza and because our world is different, the impact of this pestilence hasn't been so dramatic as it was in 1918 with the Spanish one. That flu killed 100 million of people. 

There weren't medicines, there wasn't anything; no intensive care unites, not a possibility of a chance for the patients; just the luck of their immunitary system; not all the people touched heavily by the Spanish flu died; no antibiotics, no paracetamol; no one knew exactly what caused Spanish Flu. At first people thought that it could be a bacterium because viruses couldn't be seen.

With the time our world became a better place where to live in, speaking about medicine and of course vaccinations. Science has defeated important illnesses. I personally received when little the smallpox vaccine and I am ready when my turn of being vaccinated against this other pestilence! 

But...the impact of COVID-19 "will be profound and long lasting" writes Hornton.

These past decades after all have seen a lot of inequalities, loss of decent jobs, environmental destruction, and much more; democracies entered in crisis. People started to reject the common elite of politicians that were around preferring the populistic ones in grade to reach the heart of people. With the consequences that we have anyway seen in all that countries where there were or still are populistic leaders.

This world will be drastically different when this pandemic experience will be over. 

Not only: Horton writes: "There were preventible deaths. And as the second and third waves surged, lessons were not learned. The system failed. When the cycles of suppression and rebound have finally been broken by a vaccine, when life returns to some measure of normality, difficult questions will have to be asked and answered. Because we can't afford to fail again. We may not have a second chance."

Highly recommended.

I thank Polity and Wiley for the physical copy of Covid-19 Catastrophe.

Anna Maria Polidori 

American Travel Literature, Gendered Aesthetics, and the Italian Tour, 1824–62 by Brigitte Bailey

American Travel Literature, Gendered Aesthetics, and the Italian Tour , 1824–62 by Brigitte Bailey is a fascinating book through literature, travels, paradisiac places, poetry, perceptions.


Italy and later the European Grand-Tour started to be a priority for the so-called elite, writers, poets, from the USA in search for inspiration and a new perspective in the past centuries.

Not only Americans loved to spend in the Bel Paese months when not years but once returned home they published great books thanks to their journals, sketches, giving to everybody an idea and perception: that Italy was for every one.

With the time they also invented a new profession: the one of travel-writer.

They haven't been the first ones to visit Italy, enchanted by this country.
No.
Italy was visited by Goethe and other influential people in grade to report the best of this country with its paradisiac views, his artistic treasures, stunning panoramas, characteristic people, little towns.

This book offers perspectives from the history of art, and the study of tourism from 1824 to 1862 "read" under an American response thanks to a study of many books published about this theme during this historical time.
It was a great moment, a moment in which a new culture of tourism was blooming.

The perceptions of Americans regarding Italy? Three ideas: a classical site of republican values, a Gothic site of violence and sexual danger and an Arcadian landscape.

The author mentions a nice anecdote. While she was writing this book talking of this project with her parents, they shared with her their precious scrapbook that they keep as a precious jewel of an unforgettable past of their vacations during the 1950s in Italy plenty of pictures and postcards.

What do we search in a trip in fact if not answers, escapism, discovery of new places, people, foods, atmospheres, freedom, art, culture?

While Irving loved to portraying an aesthetic Italy thanks to his sketches, journals, books, with the time Italy will start to be idealized as a female in the American's imaginary perception.

Forten, an American woman's traveler will idealized Italy and in particular Rome. Rome a place of "genius" and "beauty" where she could be just herself without any kind of pressure, color of skin.
She was fascinated by the book written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh where the protagonist will be after all in grade to concile her english and italian traits.

Cooper and Cole scrutinized Italy under an aesthetic perception, enjoying the stunning italian landscapes. To them these wonderful scenarios were also reasons for the creation of a social harmonic society thanks to the feminine traits of Italy.

But who was the first Grand Tour traveler of Europe? He was 18 years old, his name was Bayard Taylor and he sailed for Liverpool with two friends and commission for travel essays from the Saturday Evening
Post and the United States Gazette.
To Taylor, this desire of searching for Europe and the Old World a dream since he was very little.
Maybe suggests the author this youngster the first American tourist to backpack through Europe.
He spent more than two years in Britain, Germany, France and Italy for the joy of his readers and his own :-) I guess and a brilliant career in various existential sectors.

Wonderful book if you plan a visit to Italy and if you want to look at this country with the privileged lenses of a literary tourism in grade to open new dimensions.
Not only: these writers will "read" with originality and love their own Italy giving a personal interpretation under many aspects of our country.

Highly suggested to everyone and first of all to the travelers of this world.

I thank Edinburgh University Press for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori