Buondì. You may have noticed the similarity between the French and Italian flags, but did you know that Napoleon, besides being emperor of France, was also King of Italy? Perhaps, being one of the earliest Italian migrants (see today’s P.S. for the newest ebook in our Italian Diaspora series) he was homesick, who knows? Find […]
The Renaissance #26, “gli mette le corna”
Buondì. Well, The Renaissance has been a bit of a disappointment, hasn’t it? I thought there’d be plenty of stuff on science, philosophy, and so on, but apart from Galileo, the odd crispy philosopher, and a handful of painters and sculptors, it’s been a lot of articles on various European powers fighting for territory. Not […]
The Renaissance #25 / New Ebook Easy Reader, 25% Off!
Buondì. Imagine you were the king of an island, amongst other things. Not just any island, though. This one has rich cities, sumptuous foods and wines, friendly people, and it’s very nicely positioned – your seaside getaway is in a strategic location, not too far off the coast from one of Europe’s most desirable metropolises, […]
The Renaissance #24 (with the correct link this time)
Buonasera. I’d long suspected there were only a handful of club members following our Summer Series. So when in today’s earlier article I forgot to replace the link to Wednesday’s Episode 23# with Friday’s Episode #24, and indeed to add the new link to our History page (now done!), two of that handful made themselves […]
The Renaissance #24 / “Let’s roll!”
Buondì. They say there’s nothing new under the sun, and reading today’s episode from our Summer Series on the Renaissance (and the following century or two), I was reminded of that. We’re in the middle of the eighteenth century now, in Genova, where the locals are fed up with being bossed about by Austrian queens, […]
The Renaissance #23 / Cursing at other drivers
Buondì. A super-quick one today, as I’m back in Italy after my holiday in the UK. The house is full of grown up children (we’re five adults and an infant at the moment), which means shopping, cooking, and washing up, not to mention taxiing Roomie to and from her distant kindergarten and, um, actually trying […]
The Renaissance #22 / ‘Best of EasyItalianNews.com 2021-22’
Buondì. Two things today: First, for all you Italian history fans, we have the twenty-second installment of our FREE Summer Series of articles with audio, this year on The Renaissance (and the events that followed it.) Two thirds of the way into this thirty-part series, we seem to be bogged down in a long period […]
The Renaissance #21: Heroics in Turin!
Buondì. Good to see the club website‘s statistics showing signs of life again, after the quiet summer months. Even during July and August, we get vast amounts of spam, much of it in the cyrillic alphabet, with links to dodgy websites. But visits from genuine language-learners fall off, as people are on holiday (except in […]
The Renaissance #20, Naples is revolting!
Buondì. I’m still in Cornwall, where raindrops are dropping, and the gulls never shut up. But the pasties are good and the beer is cheap. We still have ‘fish and chips’ to cross off our holiday ‘to do’ list, and the kids want to go to Falmouth for the charity shops (‘thrift stores’ in US […]
The Renaissance #19 / Half Price eBook of the Week Offer!
Buondì. Hope you had a nice weekend! I’m in Cornwall, England, which is beautiful, but out of the way. It took us over nine hours in a hire car to get here from London Stanstead airport, due to traffic on the motorway/interstate/autostrada, call it what you will. I’m travelling with two of my grown up […]