The Art of Selling Movies by John McElwee

Going to the cinema to me means everytime to feel that strong magic. It's a strange sensation. It's
like to leaving once I am in the theater the old normal dimension of my reality for living a dream. A
door of a theater to me means the entrance in another dimension: the one of a dream for a hour and
half for two hours. It's something I can't completely describe because too profound and felt.

It's like if a portion of me would abandon the normality for being completely immersed in a
different and new exciting world. Movies are these: dreams created by a lot of
dream-makers not just movie-makers. It would be too
simplistic according to my point of view. I love all-fashioned things, stories, I go crazy for
vintage, romanticism and where possible the past world, more suggestive, real, cleaned, less predictable and more normal under many aspects. It is also for this reason that I requested and I was approved by NetGalley for reading
The Art of Selling Movies by John McElwee by GoodKnight Books.

If you want and if you love to understand much better what it meant publicity, ads in newspapers at first the only way for communicating to the people that a new movie was coming to their town, this book is for you. We are at the beginning of 1900 a long walk since at 1960s.

Wagons and wagons of ads of every possible movie, the author is an avid collectors of ads. These movies will live again bringing back to you joy for a past period maybe you have lived or maybe not, as it happened for me, although I grew up with the movies of most of these remarkable, immense stars because programmed on TV.


The net didn't exist in 1910,for example and families couldn't have any clue of what to go to see to the cinema. They couldn't surf the web for discovering the opinions of Rotten Tomatoes, they couldn't watch some trailers. And so?

In the past each theater mainly organized at first ads and publicity in local newsmagazines. They emphasized the arrival of the movie. At that time people tried all their best through drawings,beautiful fonts, incisive phrases for gently forcing people or entire families to spend some time to the cinema. What is cinema if not one of the most wonderful
dream of our times?
Somewhere someone has put all his intelligence and creativity for creating a dream. It can be a beautiful dream, a dream for the entire family, a horror. Whatever will be it will be a masterpiece and a creature of many minds and creators.

The book analyzes of course the various phases of the ads. In 1920s for example movies like Variety, 1926 with
the entrance in scene of new boats, fastest cars and biggest industrialization made the difference.
Sounds added to the movies and it meant that people could hear also the voices of their favorite actors and actresses.
In many cases ads put their accent on the beauty of the protagonists of the movie, others tried to tell the story in few lines, strong and of secure effect able to speak at women firstly, children and men in this order.  Also in ads no one forgot to add that there was air conditioned in their theaters, a luxury just richest ones could afford in that old times.  Everything, from pop-corn to the diversified
possibility of food and drinks offered to the viewers published.

A ticket in the 20's cost just 50 cents.
The big crisis of 1929 created a big depression also in the sector. Many theaters' owners constricted to close their theaters in particular in little towns. In the while ads of the five most important studios became more sophisticated.

In 1933 arrives on the big screen King Kong, a timeless classic. Censorship a reality. Horror starts to be an important voice in Hollywood's industry like also foreign wild places and stories. Look at Tarzan and not only Tarzan...

Tom Sawyer written by Mark Twain? Its appearance on theaters in 1930.

A new movie in particular in a little town was a sensational event and theaters tried all their best for attracting as many people as possible. In 1939 the arrival of Judy Garland and The Wizard of Oz.
Actors became icons for people.

Stanlio & Ollio presented to the viewers  wagons of smiles and great laughs. Why modern comicity is so sad why Stanlio & Ollio so wonderful? Clark Gable one of the sexiest and recognized talented actors of Hollywood. Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire began to flying, ops, to dance on the big screen for the joy and happiness of American families.

The Gulliver's Travel a new dream of 1939 like also Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by Disney.

The 1940's are the age of boom and a different market but also of Hitler portrayed by Charlie Chaplin.

When war finished saluted with great joy and enthusiasm by everyone. Feasts were lived with enthusiasm and everyone loved to celebrate. In these celebrations cinema was a voice more than welcomed and surely included by everyone.
Stars like Frank Sinatra and Glenn Miller on screen and everyone wanted to go to see them to the cinema singing and acting and dancing. John Wayne a name of western movies, Bela Lugosi of  horror movies, Bugs Bunny and friends another great reality for children, Mickey Rooney, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum, Rita Hayworth, Elizabeth Taylor,Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck,the biggest stars of Hollywood.


The 50s speaks of more acculturated viewers,  tired of what they were seeing to the cinema. 
The arrival of TV meant a new different phase in the sense that competition and different opportunities for movies were born.

Theaters changed, for better the vision of the movies with Cinerama.
Drive-ins after the Second World War returned to be a reality for  families, couples, some friends who wanted to enjoy some outdoor moments with joy, serenity living a different evening enjoying at the same time a good meal and great company.

More adult contents, a market created only for some people, sectors, children for example, while in 1955 movies  and their promotion starts to be seen also on TV.

Newspapers ads so in the 60s lost their big and central importance considering that other medium involved and movies could be seen at home as well.


I consider this book a rich story of the American cinema. If you love newsmagazines and the power of  illustrations, if you treasure the past, if you want to keep close to you a piece of cinema, the ones most hidden the one brought people to the theater for seeing a movie, this book is for you!

You will find in every pages many wonderful ads, a joy to see these ads, never seen before and how America and the imaginations of a lot of men and women described the movies. Movies with which I grew up with and
that let me fell in love once for cinema. Each ad of the newspaper commented by the author.

This book is a real treasure and will be released this new year, on Feb 28th. Don't miss this date!



Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishing house GoodKnight Books.

Anna Maria Polidori

Charles Dickens as I knew Him by George Dolby

Dickens looked under the perspective of his own manager George Dolby. Charles Dickens as I knew him by George Dolby published by Endeavour Press this past Oct 14 is a real portrait of this genius of the literature of all the time.
Who could have known Dickens better than his manager? This one is a complete profile, the book is short and so it won't take a lot of time to read it. The most remarkable British author of all the times won't have many other secrets to you. I love Dickens and his books. Every time a new book appears in term of biographies, I love the ones of Peter Ackroyd dedicated to Dickens, I try to capture it.

Go for this eBook with the certainty of finding very good informations and a great biography. Dickens as I knew Him focuses also on the private life of Dickens and his various tours in particular in the USA. It is known that maybe he was inspired by his trip to Boston for his masterpiece, A Christmas Carol.

In this book taken in consideration his second trip/tour to the USA.
Dickens lived a life plenty of success but as it happens often to genius also contradictory and plenty of events.

He could be a hard man, celebrating the joy of family in his books and researching the joy and warm of a family in fictional books, being at the same time indifferent at his own family and indifferent of what was going on. Who knows? Maybe he dreamed to have an ideal family but he didn't love his family after all.
Not the real one maybe because in his thoughts family was perfect, while in the reality it is a continuous problem-solving. Who knows?

His intelligence moved him here and there but if we remain at the imagine we have of his writings, we can absolutely affirm he has been a genius.
Beautiful!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Endeavour Press for this eBook.

Anna Maria Polidori

Love, Alice by Barbara Davis

Have you ever fought with all yourself for reading a book not yet appeared to the horizon because you simply thought that you had a strong connection with it and/ or you thought that it deserved to be read?

It happened to me. When last summer I joined NetGalley discovering wagons of wonderful books, one of those books became my obsession: Love, Alice by Barbara Davis.

At first I requested it through NetGalley, but being a book reserved only for Americans readers and reviewers I tried but I was declined.
Not happy I sent an e-mail to the author.
Time passed by but my obstinacy for reading this book remained intact.

In recent times somewhere I guess in one of the newsletters of books I receive I read again something of this book and I thought: I must obtain a copy, let me go and see how I can do that. I discovered the Facebook page of the author.

Great, let's see...

The giveaways through Goodreads gone, but there was a final chance I noticed looking at one of her posts: the possibility of reading it through First to Read the website set up by Penguin and Random House for introducing to readers/reviewers their latest novelties. I joined it immediately, I requested the book and this time hooray, I was picked up!

Sadly when I was accepted my dad fell also very sick. He died this Nov 2. If possible the message of this book is also more powerful according to my point of view and considering the main set of the story: a cemetery.

I want to add that all my fights for reading a copy of this book for a review deserved the time I spent online. This book is superbly written, magical, very well constructed, with few characters and all portrayed wonderfully well. Never confused, past and present a miscellaneous where you will love to indulge for find again a beautiful present and a brilliant future for the protagonists. I love these genre of books and I knew that this one would have been a great winning one for sure.
Tender, sweet, wise, Love, Alice by Barbara Davis is a sort of American/British Philomena as she will also specify by the same author at the end of the book in a note for the readers. Strangely, stories like this one are still a taboo and considered, obvious, a big shame for places like UK and Ireland where there was a strong commerce the past decades of little unwanted or maybe so wanted babies that couldn't be kept by these horrible, terrible sinner-girls. Rich couples in places like Canada, USA adopted these children paying a lot of money and giving to them a wonderful existence.

The story takes place in the 1960s and although pretty similar to the one of Philomena in this case is fictional.  Powerful, moving, the book will be released this Dec 6th.

While I was reading it, I thought that although I live in Italy, so a Catholic place we haven't known this problem and it's comforting.

Charleston, profound South of the USA.

Dovie works in a museum and she is an efficient girl.
She had a life once, she must have thought while she was looking at the grave of her beloved fiance William. At the moment her best friend is one of the guardians of the cemetery, cemetery where she loves to eat everyday her lunch sat on a bench close to William's grave (sometimes sharing the lunch with the guardian) and where she tries to find profound answers because of the departure of her wonderful boyfriend. He killed himself.
Why William decided to kill himself without to specifying the reason a month before their wedding that had to be celebrated a year ago?
Why a gesture so absurd?

We all have known situations like these ones and we all know how difficult can be to give an answer at these gestures and how hard is to going on for the so-called survivors.

When not any single word is left at the imagination, as William Dovie's fiance decides to do, people can think this world and the other.
And Dovie feels that maybe she didn't understand completely her fiance, that maybe, why not? it was also her fault if William killed himself, because she didn't notice any signal. If she would have guessed some signals, if she would have noticed something, if...
History is not made with if, or but and rationalize a departure like this one sometimes difficult.

Close to William the grave of Alice Tandy, a young girl lost her life in a mysterious way more than 40 years ago. There was a sculpture dedicated to her. The Tate Family a very rich and influential family loved this girl for sure, thought Dovie.

Sure stories surrounding Alice were many and most of them focused on a relationship maybe with Mr Tate, Gemma's husband.

Alice worked in their family as nanny of Austin their only son.

Dovie didn't mind after all. These ones were words reported by people and a lot of time in the while passed by.

But, one day, a devastated lady leaves a letter close to Alice Tandy's grave, and this first letter captures the attention of Dovie. Dovie in fact spends most of her time in the cemetery when she has some free time. Her friend Theda thinks she should return to live, like also the guardian of the cemetery, but without any kind of answer, without to discovering why her William committed such a horrible act, how can she think to return to live a complete and normal life?

She can't.

She decides to bring home this letter, and she discovers the devastated letter of a mom to a daughter lost forever, not just because in a grave, but because of her horrible behavior as a mom not anymore forgotten by Alice. This lady, Dora, lost her daughter more than 40 years ago. Dora, sick and in the final part of her existence arrived from the Old Continent in search for answers and she found just a grave.


Dovie read this first letter and once returned to the cemetery she opens her heart with the guardian of the cemetery at the same time becoming a friend of Dora.
If at first the man is skeptical and thinks as always that she should return to the life, he understand something: that maybe trying to understand the past of Alice Tandy and her family, Dovie can re-start to find her own peace. Although it was still unclear in what way. So he will help her thanks to other letters and a final box of letters of Alice Tandy completely forgotten for decades.

But who was Alice?

A terribly sad creature. She was admitted at Blackhursts a British catholic institution as a terrible sinner when pregnant of the baby she created with Johnny. When her mom Dora discovered she was pregnant and Alice's boyfriend dead, she decided that Alice had to go away for a while. Times were different, and talked girls wouldn't never have found a husband and a future.

Dora didn't use any kind of compassion for Alice, her condition and the  baby Alice would have wanted to keep so badly.
Dora had other plans for her daughter.
She had made many sacrifices, setting aside for her daughter money for her studies. Dora couldn't imagine  her daughter would have followed her disgraceful destiny. Alice was born because of an "error" of love and hormones.
She imagined a brightest future for her daughter, but now? Her same sad destiny? And was it an error to Dora a daughter like Alice? Of course not, but Dora wanted to see realized the dreams she would have wanted to live and that she hadn't never seen realized for herself and projected in her daughter's life.  Failing.

Alice won't find any kind of forgiveness for such insensitive mother once returned home deciding to afford to the USA where with certainty she could have found her baby.

Of course Dora wanted just what it was the best for her daughter, no doubt of it, but who knows what can be the best for our children and for us?

At the same time thanks to her work at the museum Dovie must organize with Gemma Tate and her son Austin a fund rising and she will start to spend some time with Austin Tate, falling in love for this troubled fascinating man with a lot of problems and fears and scars from the past.

The family Tate treated with great respect considering the social status of the people involved, Dovie will discovered that maybe the past she is absorbed and she is "swimming" in is more close than the one she could have thought at first...


Why buying this book?  It's warm, first of all. Written very well,
you will discover compassion, true good heart, good values, maturity. The most profound real pains analyzed with great respect under the  respective lenses and point of views of the various protagonists all anyway very positive people, clear, cleaned in their actions, also when things were hidden. There is great freshness, the past is not lived as a horrible mistake but as a redemption. After all not big errors committed by the various protagonists and love was a constant theme of them all. The reader will have a complete prospect of what the various protagonists felt correct to do under certain circumstances.

Sometimes we can be guilty or victims. Guilty when we try to change the destiny of other people or maybe victims of people or circumstances that choose our destiny for us. Wrongly.

Reality again won't be the one lived by the various protagonists and what it will appear, at first a facade of joy, happiness, will reveal another side of the story as it happens for Dovie and her beloved William.

But you mustn't never think for a second that the acts of the various protagonists acid or perfidious. You will love all of them for different, various reasons. Austin for his fragility, Dovie for her devotion to William, Kristopher because he loves to be clear, Gemma simply because she is a real sweet protective mature Lady, Alice because of her desire to be mom, Dora because she wants to be forgiven but what she meets is just a grave and new friends able to reveal her the real life-story of her beloved daughter. And you will love Dora because a mom can be wrong but acts always with love.
Dora lost her daughter, as Alice would have lost her son because of her "sin". After all: two souls in pain.

Later we will see how all the protagonists will be set free because after all, the most important and urgent questions answered. The people involved in this story will find peace and they will be in grade to continue to live with lightness their life.

Life after all it's a story of waves and fate...


This book has meant the world to me and I wanted to read it so badly. I  thank firstly NetGalley because I discovered it thanks to them and First To Read, because they donated me the opportunity of realize this dream.


Of course a great Christmas Gift!


Anna Maria Polidori

The Chef's Library - Favorite Cookbooks from the World's Great Kitchens - by Jenny Linford

I don't know you, but I am a passionate of cookbooks. They are the perfect door for looking at another culture more closely. There is not maybe a more powerful vehicle like food for defining a country.
Italy? It's pasta and pizza. France? Cheese in every sauce.
USA? Hamburger, french fries, sandwiches, robust food.
Food says a lot about the culture of a country, because we understand the most profound and indispensable habits of the citizens of a certain place.

I am a passionate of foreign food and being a Sagittarius when I go somewhere I love to taste the food of that country. It's a must and I know that it is a winning choice and experience everytime.

If you love to travel in your kitchen a lot, The Chef's Library - Favorite Cookbooks from the World's Great Kitchens - by Jenny Linford published by ABRAMS is the perfect book a real database of the most wonderful cookbooks existing in the face of this Earth.

It's a joy for the eyes and the belly this book where you will find the opportunity to discover wagons and wagons of cookbooks for every sorta of necessity and occasion. Do you want to pick up a book for an special dinner? Do you plan an international lunch and you want some inspiration from prestigious sources? Panic can't exist with this book by ABRAMS. Every possible curiosity will be satisfied. There will always be the perfect answer for your necessities.

Sometimes you will want to be less local and more cosmopolitan or maybe more citizen of this Old World, or old-fashioned for cooking or baking something delicious to your family or your friends. Don't worry: many great great cookbooks are waiting for you.


The book is divided per chapters. In the first one there a section of the Chef's favorites Cookbooks.
The second chapter will involve the cookbooks who in the years made the difference.
The third chapter is a Cookbook directory, so Cookbooks of the world, general cookbooks, specialty cookbooks and my favorite section: historical cookbooks!

Trust me: buy with joy and happiness this powerful and complete Library. It is the most delicious one existing in the world and it will be truly helpful in various moment and phases of your existence.

I thank NetGalley and ABRAMS for this book!

Anna Maria Polidori

Twenty-Five Profiles and Recipes from America's Essential Bakery and Pastry Artisans by Sosland Companies

Do you want to succumb at pastry and bread in a trip of no-return?
If your answer is yes Twenty-Five Profiles and Recipes from America's Essential Bakery and Pastry Artisans by Sosland Companies published by Andrews McMeel Publishing this Oct 11 is for you.

This amazingly beauty book will illustrate you thanks to the best American pastry chefs all the best in terms of bread, cookies and all the possible sweet delicacy you have in your mind.

It's a book that you will love with all yourself because explicative, plenty of recipes, the various chefs will illustrate their personal story, their past and present, their passions and their creations with punctuality, but because you will see all the love that these wonderful creative and human beings have put in every creation realized by them.

Food is this: it's a magic, and when you find someone able to let you see this magic, don't miss this opportunity.

I would have wanted to see maybe sunniest pictures of the various food. The color chosen for the pictures keeps the atmosphere cold when bakery and pastry is a joy for the eyes and the mouth.

Perfect gift for Christmas.

Many thanks to NetGalley for this book!


Anna Maria Polidori

The Christmas Guest by Daisy Bell

It was a cover-love story at first in the case of The Christmas Guest written by Daisy Bell and published by Quercus Book this Oct 3.
I thought that a book with such a beautiful, tender cover, had to be read as soon as possible because wonderful.
I requested it through NetGalley and well, let me say I was right: I found the book completely enchanting.

The Christmas Guest will be your best blanket for your Christmas Time, the most delicious gingerbread cookie you'll taste, the most colorful ball of your Christmas Tree, the warmest milk you will sip the Christmas Day for Breakfast, the most beautiful, warm fireplace.

The Christmas Guest most importantly, will be the book that will bring back to you a reason for hoping in a lightest future, a reason for being optimistic and positive, and for seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

The story as it is told and structured reminded me while I was reading it a tale I read time ago written by Mark Twain for the impressive and real description of the dog's character, like also the story of Enzo, the protagonist of The art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein one of my favorite doggie books, because also The Christmas Guest narrated in first person and this first person is...Teddy the little puppy, like also  in the books previously mentioned.

This book is an adorable gem. The description of the character of a puppy given by the author the most real portrait that could be written. Plus there is this warm, this delicacy, this positive vibe all along the book, these good feelings, this positive, happy and joyous narration. All these elements mixed together gives a perfect Christmas Story able to make the difference.

Who is a dog? They give all themselves for making us happy, for making us joyous and they live in the moment as remarked. A puppy or a dog doesn't mind for a lot of things, they enjoy little things and they just want to be loved by us.

This book written wonderfully well is enchanting for the good heart with which it has been written. This one is the story of a wonderful puppy at first in the hands of a very wealthy couple, Veronica and Richard. Richard thought that Veronica, his companion would have appreciated a puppy and bought one for her. Pity that the partner of Richard, didn't find the puppy so adorable at all and she hated him because he destroyed all her wonderful new shoes, that maybe after all she could have re-bought considering the status of the couple.

Anyway, one day, who knows why, during a car-stop with Richard and Veronica, Mr. Snuffles, at that time the name of the puppy, just 2 months old, ops, who knows why, got lost. He runs and he runs since he meets this new house thanks to the smell of a wonderful chicken dish one of the favorite ones of Richard and Veronica.

The people living in this new house, the Woods are not as rich as Veronica and Richard are, and they have many thoughts, money, but mainly the sad condition in which precipitated their beloved daughter Emily after meningitis.
A state of profound prostration and weakness. Nothing can help Emily to stay better. For Ben and Claire, people with great heart the arrival of this puppy a good surprise, although considering all, they thought at first of not keeping him. They named him Teddy Bear, Teddy for everyone. At first they thought maybe the puppy got lost and no one could believe the puppy abandoned.
Teddy notices the big difference between the house of Richard and Veronica and this one, much more warm and rich of hospitality. Adored by all the family, what happened later will let you smile and cry. Teddy in fact in the house and in the garden, when left alone will act as a perfect terrible puppy, helped by sly Martha, the old cat of Ben and Claire jealous of the new arrival and happy to send him to hell and happy to put him in bad consideration.
At the same time Teddy will make friendship with Tobias (not a lot after all at first) and his dog Lady.

What Teddy would wants so badly is to be kept by this new family because what Teddy thinks is that he can helps them, but sometimes it's a story of puppy disasters, and so what to do?

There will be also heroic moments for this brave puppy as well.

Can at the end Teddy  be a Christmas Blessing? A real Blessing for this Family considering he arrived just a week or so before Christmas?

One of the most touching books I have read, I strongly suggest it to you for the delicate touch, for the beautiful narration, the wonderful situations created and for the positive vibes able to spread.

It was a balm to read it.

A great gift for Christmas for you, your children but for your friends as well.

At the end of the book a special section for the readers.

I thank NetGalley for this book!


Anna Maria Polidori

Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned Edited by Gretchen Schultz & Lewis Seifert

I believe in fairies. I have always believed in fairies and little folks and all the rest of magical creatures. After all I grew up in a countryside where most people convinced of the existence of witches and little folk and magical places and where the enchantment part of our culture.     I was terrorized when mom asked me to return home adding: "Run Anna run, before you will be captured by some witches." Fear was the night, the sunset, that indefinite moment when people can also disappear.

I confess that this idea terrorized me and although I consider witches funny because they can go here and there with their magi cal broomstick and they use a caldron for various enchantments    my imaginary world has been mainly populated by fairies and the rest of wonderful magical creatures angels included and wagons and wagons of fairy-tales since I was very little. It's one of my favorite genre this one, the one of the fairy-tales because the most important door for let us fly our imagination abandoning the ordinary world.

When I decided to request Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned Edited by Gretchen Schultz & Lewis Seifert and published by Princeton University Press this First October and I was approved to read it thanks to NetGalley I discovered with great pleasure that the series editor of this book is Jack Zipes.
What a joy and surprise!
An eminence very known in the world of fairy-tales and professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at the university of Minnesota.
I interviewed him when Into the Woods  the movie by Marshall was released.
The magical musical written by James Lapine and legendary Sondheim became a movie in fact with Meryl Streep and with Johnny Depp  as the terrible lascivious wolf

Here you can read my interview with Mr. Zipes.
https://buckwriter.wordpress.com/author/buckwriter/page/62/

Fairy-tales sometimes were not born exactly for being stories for children but mainly for adults. They're very adult sometimes.
Later with Brothers Grimm the idea of expanding commercially fairy-tales. A lot of adult contents removed, fairy-tales became cultural and mental food for a very young public. In these fairy-tales defined characters, the ugly terrible witch, the good godmother, prince charming, some nasty characters able to create turmoil at the protagonist, and in general a happy and sunny end after a lot of fights of various genres.
 
After all a fairy- tale contains a morale, there is always something that wants to teach to the public.

In this beautiful book you will find most of the biggest french names of literature of 1800 beginning of 1900 in total 19 for 36 fairy-tales.
These writers are mostly decadent,  and intellectually raised during the philosophical movement of the Positivism.
France lived a straining moment at the end of 1700. The French revolution of 1789 with the decapitation, also in physical sense of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and the season of Terror lived with Robespierre and later the arrival of Napoleon very stressing moments. A lot of changes in terms of governments and substantially what it was a real instance of change, from monarchy to something else, became for Paris and the entire France a real period of Terror. Robespierre tried all his best for keeping in his hands the power although at the end that same power would have ruined, destroyed and killed him as well.
At the same time 1800 didn't start negatively. A new philosophical movement, the Positivism was born. Technology, progress,, new improvements in medicine field and new methods for fighting important illness, there was a new enthusiasm: the idea that industrialization, modernity would have saved the world.
As always, there were also contrary voices. Why? Well intellectual and most sensitive people started to realize something, worried: where could go all the enchantment of the world with the use and abuse of machines? What could it be of old fairy-tales when there was the necessity of building always biggest cities, reducing the green and reducing the contact of humans with nature?
And so these fairy-tales, where there is not always a real happy end, but there is maybe the reality of the times and the melancholy of the lost things never found anymore.
I consider these fairy-tales of strong actuality because world if in the past was enchanted and perfect because man lived a strong connection with nature, at the moment confused and paradoxically lost by the disenchantment produced by the progress and the idea that the materialism could replace a dream or the ability of dreaming.

All these fairy-tales are intriguing, truly captivating, put into the reality of the moment. History teaches us something of great importance: that modification of fairy-tales is indispensable for understanding our reality looking at the various changes through  the lenses of the various centuries of the various story-tellers it's possible to learn where the society went on.  Thanks to fairy-tales we can understand where the world is. A fairy-tale is maybe the most perfect and most powerful mirror not just for understanding our world but also our social condition and our way of life.

This book a perfect gift for Christmas, all these fairy-tales are enchanting, funny, with a touch of sadness written and translated wonderfully wonderfully well. Ah: the gift is just for adults! Keep away this book from children ;-) and please continue to present them classic fairy-tales. Maybe they will remain dream but they will give them the perception of the immensity of possibility life can present. 

Many thanks to NetGalley for this book!

Anna Maria Polidori