From the bestselling author who has captured the voluptuousness of Italian life in sensuous and evocative prose, comes a lavishly illustrated celebration of Tuscany's people, food, landscapes, and art, as well as the abundant pleasures of Italian life as it is lived at home, at festivals, feasts, restaurants, and markets, in the kitchen and on the piazza, and in the vineyards, fields, and olive groves.
Combining all-new essays and more than 150 full-color photographs taken at Mayes's direction by the award-winning travel photographer Bob Krist, In Tuscany is divided into five sections, each celebrating an aspect of Tuscan life:
La Piazza - the locus of the Italian village. With photographs of shop signs, tiny museums and medieval courtyards, people, their pets and their cars, and snippets of conversations overheard, Mayes reveals the life of the piazza in her town of Cortona as well as less-traveled places such as Volterra, Asciano, Monte San Savino, and Poppi.
La Festa - the celebration. In essays and photos of several kinds of feasts and celebrations, such as the Christmas dinner for twenty-seven at a neighbor's house and a donkey race around the church near Montepulciano, Mayes illustrates how the Tuscans celebrate the seasons -- their open ways of friendship, their connection to nature, and most of all, their sense of abundance.
Il Campo - the field. Here Edward Mayes evokes the deep sense of the shift of seasons as he hunts for mushrooms and picks olives before heading off to the olive oil mill and enjoying the first bruschetta with the new oil.
La Cucina - the kitchen. An intimate view of the all-important role of the kitchen in Tuscan culture, including photographs of Mayes's own bright kitchen and gardens, menus from great local cooks, the elements of the Tuscan table, signature dishes with cultural and culinary notes on each, and, of course, delectable recipes.
La Bellezza - the beauty. From the quality of the light falling on sublime landscapes in different seasons and Tuscan faces in moments of laughter, to a silhouette of cypress trees in the early evening and a pile of marmalade cats asleep, In Tu
About the Authors and Photographer
Frances Mayes is author of the New York Times bestsellers Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy (combined total of over 1.5 million copies in print) as well as five books of poetry. A frequent contributor to food and travel publications, she divides her time between Cortona, Italy, and San Francisco, where she is Professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. Edward Mayes is the author of Work and Days and five other books of poetry. He is director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Clara University. Bob Krist is the author of Spirit of the Place: The Art of the Traveling Photographer. His international photography has appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Smithsonian, Islands, and many other publications. A contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler and Popular Photography, he lives in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
