Synopsis
"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. Or should you want to goad female desires, throw 90 grubs in a liter of olive oil, let steep in the sun for a week and apply liberally on the male anatomy. Bell's journey through booklets long dismissed by scholars as being of little literary value gives us a refreshing and surprisingly fun social history. Lively and curious reading, particularly in its cascade of anecdote, offered in a breezy, cozy, journalistic style. OCoLauro Martines, "Times Literary Supplement" [Bell's] fascinating book is a window on a lost world far nearer to our own than we might imagine. . . . How pleasant to read his delightful, informative and often hilarious book. OCoKate Saunders, "The Independent" An extraordinary work which blends the learned with the frankly bizarre. OCo"The Economist" Professor Bell has a sly sense of humor and an enviably strong stomach. . . . He wants to know how people actually behaved, not how the Church or philosophers or earnest humanists thought they should behave. I loved this book. OCoChristopher Stace, "Daily Telegraph""
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About the Author
Rudolph M. Bell, professor of history at Rutgers University, is the author of a number of books in Italian history, among them Fate and Honor, Family and Village: Demographic and Cultural Change in Rural Italy Since 1800, Holy Anorexia, How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians, and The Voices of Gemma Galgani: The Life and Afterlife of a Modern Saint (with Cristina Mazzoni), all published by the University of Chicago Press.
From the Inside Flap
How to Do It shows us sixteenth-century Italy from an entirely new perspective: through manuals that were staples in the households of middlebrow Italians merely trying to lead better lives. Addressing various challenges such as how to conceive a boy, or what to do should you want to goad female (or male) desires, these booklets give us a refreshing and fun social history.
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