American English, Italian chocolate : small subjects of great importance / Rick Bailey.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bailey, Richard, 1952- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bailey, Richard, 1952-.

Bailey, Richard.

Bailey, Richard, 1952---Childhood and youth.

Bailey, Richard, 1952---Travel--Italy.

Bailey, Richard, 1952---Travel--United States.

College teachers--Michigan--Dearborn--Biography.

College teachers.

Italy--Description and travel.

Italy.

United States--Description and travel.

United States.

Italy--Social life and customs.

United States--Social life and customs.

Michigan--Biography.

Michigan.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (208 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Lincoln, [Nebraska] ; London, [England] : University of Nebraska Press, 2017.

Summary:

"American English, Italian Chocolate is a memoir in essays beginning in the American Midwest and ending in north central Italy. In sharply rendered vignettes, Rick Bailey reflects on donuts and ducks, horses and car crashes, outhouses and EKGs. He travels all night from Michigan to New Jersey to attend the funeral of a college friend. After a vertiginous climb, he staggers in clogs across the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. In a trattoria in the hills above the Adriatic, he ruminates on the history and glories of beans, from Pythagoras to Thoreau, from the Saginaw Valley to the Province of Urbino. Bailey is a bumbling extra in a college production of Richard III. He is a college professor losing touch with a female student whose life is threatened by her husband. He is a father tasting samples of his daughter's wedding cake. He is a son witnessing his aging parents' decline. He is the husband of an Italian immigrant who takes him places he never imagined visiting, let alone making his own. At times humorous, at times bittersweet, Bailey's ultimate subject is growing and knowing, finding the surprise and the sublime in the ordinary detail of daily life"--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1. Big White Birds

2. Boy Scouts, Ringworm, and Paris

3. Sound Off

4. Kissing Age

5. There Will Be Horses

6. Sick Wild

7. The Man from Glad, Car Crash, Amnesia

8. Clinical

9. Psyched

10. Love and Breakup in the Time of Watergate

11. Love at First Shite

12. Feet First

13. For Donna, Ibsen, Pepys, Levitation

14. The Soft Imperative

15. Third-Wave Coffee

16. Wisdom Teeth and Encyclopaedia Britannica

17. What's Up with Dramatic-Value Vomit?

18. Old Houses, New Residents

19. Bee Spree

20. Hello, Mr. President

21. Chemical Neutral

22. Pure Corn

23. Fly

24. The Honey Room

25. Bridge Failure, Heart Attack, Fava Beans

26. Monkey, Nailing Biting, Jesus

27. Cardio, Lightbulbs, and a Funeral

28. The Rule of One

29. Water Me

30. Feathers

31. The Quality of Your Sleep

32. My Father, Going Deaf

33. No Secrets, Victoria

34. Flip-Flops and the Leaning Tower of Pisa

35. Ravioli, Richard III, and a Dead Bird

36. Apri la Porta

37. Buongiorno

38. What's New

39. Small Beans

40. American English, Italian Chocolate.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781496201751

1496201752

9781496201737

1496201736