Taddei Capt Mario (1 results)

Softcover. Condition: Very Good. First edition. Cover by "AB." Introduction by the author. Text in Italian. Octavo. 376, index + ads pp. Illustrated with black and white plates of photographs by the author. Wrappers with wear and soil, front cover with a bit of shallow loss near the crown, pages toned and a few instances of very brief pencil underlining, very good and sound. Original publisher's mailing label laid in. Travelogue of an Italian man who traveled across the U.S. in the winter of 1932, driving a Fiat 525 SS. He began his trip in New York and traveled through Washington, D.C., Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and then on to Los Angeles, the Yosemite Valley, Carmel by the Sea, San Francisco, and the Baja. Although not signed, this copy belonged to author and critic Michele Cantarella, a leading anti-Fascist Italian expatriate. The mailing label is addressed to "Books Abroad" at Smith College, where Cantarella taught in the Italian department. Cantarella reviewed this book in the magazine *Books Abroad* in 1937. Alas, the review was middling. He was not a fan of the book's "sort of log book style," although he had good things to say about the passages on New York and California "where the author stayed long enough to observe and reflect," calling them "the most important and interesting of the book." He closes the review with a half-serious nod to car enthusiasts, writing ".if the American reader will learn very little about his own country from this book he will find an exhaustive Italian vocabulary dealing with the automobile and its operation." Still an interesting and very uncommon American travelogue; of the 25 of so entries in *OCLC*, the majority seem to be on microfiche, part of the "Travels in the New South" series.