The Italians

By: John Hooper

Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong

John Hooper's marvelously entertaining and perceptive new book is ideal for anyone seeking to understand contemporary Italy and the unique character of the Italians.

Looking at the facts that lie behind and often belie the stereotypes, his revealing book sheds new light on many aspects of Italian life: football and Freemasonry, sex, symbolism, and the reason Italian has twelve words for a coat hanger yet none for a hangover

.©2015 John Hooper (P)2015 W F Howes Ltd

Historical elements good. Contemporary (2010) elements dated

Author is well intentioned but has a very blinkered globalist Davos view of economic, immigration, and cultural issues

A bit slow at first , then nails it

I just moved to Italy and this book explains so much. Entertaining and relevant. Started out slow, but if this is an interest of yours, it’s worth sticking out.

Awesome!

I absolutely loved it! five stars for Hooper and Armstrong. I'm Italian and my family is from Naples.

Interesting but not kind

This was definitely interesting and I appreciated the insights in to Italian behavior, which I believe, had some merits. However, you get a sense that the author does not really like Italian people, in fact, it seems he despises them. It's one thing to take a hard look at a culture and examine what drives it but the author seems to only gloss on the many wonderful aspects of Italian cultural and the life of it's people. Instead, he insists time and time again, that Italians are sneaky, unethical, and altogether unsuccessful. As an Italian American, who celebrates his cultural heritage, I often felt a bit insulted at this author's constant attacking narrative towards the Italian people.
The narration was well done but the book itself is a bit dry and the narrative only strengthens that, leading to a bit of a boring listen.

Quirky at times, but a good read

I'm not an Italophile, but am interested in learning about other places, and the audio sample seemed pretty good, so I decided to get this one.

Basically, it's an overview of aspects of Italian culture that have struck the expat author as ... notable: rampant cheating on exams, string resistance to eating foreign foods, wearing sunglasses on cloudy days, the mixed feelings on religion, and so forth; his section on (organized) crime near the end got a bit deep in the weeds for me, but otherwise I found the book interesting.

Honestly, 3.5 stars for content; however, the audio narration was enthusiastic, without being over-the-top, so it gets rounded up for that.