"A classic."—New York Times "Seminal, epochal, path-breaking . . . a Democracy in America for our times."—The Nation From the bestselling author of Bowling Alone, a landmark account of the secret of successful democracies Why do some democratic governments succeed and others fail? In a book that has received attention from policymakers and civic activists in America and around the world, acclaimed political scientist and bestselling author Robert Putnam and his collaborators offer empirical evidence for the importance of "civic community" in developing successful institutions. Their focus is on a unique experiment begun in 1970, when Italy created new governments for each of its regions. After spending two decades analyzing the efficacy of these governments in such fields as agriculture, housing, and healthcare, they reveal patterns of associationism, trust, and cooperation that facilitate good governance and economic prosperity. The result is a landmark book filled with crucial insights about how to make democracy work.

"During the last decade, the emergence of Italy as the dominant force in design has had a profound influence in Europe and the Americas. The phenomenon is important not only because of the high quality and diversity of the forms produced, but also because it has generated a lively debate on the sociocultural implications of product design, raising questions of vital concern to designers throughout the world. For many designers, the aesthetic quality of individual objects intended for private consumption have become irrelevant in the face of such pressing problems as poverty, urban decay, and the pollution of the environment now encountered in all industrialized countries. Consequently, they are increasingly shifting he focus of their attention from the well-designed object to man's total environment, seeing the designer's function as one that can mold patterns of behavior by creating new settings for freer, more adaptable lifestyles. Some, however, despairing of effecting social change through design, regard their task as essentially a political one. They therefore abstain from the physical designing of either objects or environments and channel their energies into the staging of events and the issuing of polemical statements. Their approach thus parallels that of many artists in other mediums who view their art in primarily conceptual terms. This publication, issued in conjunction with a major exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, is the first to deal comprehensively with these challenging developments. Over 150 objects of Italian design of the past ten years have been selected for the show and are all reproduced in color and black-and-white, as are the dozen environments by well-known Italian designers specially commissioned for the occasion, and the two awarded prizes in a concurrent competition for young designers under thirty-five sponsored by the Museum. Each environment is accompanied by a statement in which the individual or group responsible for the project clarifies his position regarding the present and future role of design. In addition to essays by Emilio Ambasz, Curator of Design at the Museum of Modern Art and director of the exhibition, the book contains contributions by a number of outstanding Italian critics and art historians. Together, these comprise the first historical survey of contemporary Italian design and a critical analysis of its intellectual and formal positions within the context of international design today." -- Publisher's description

All the information you could possibly need for your time in Italy, whether a week or a decade, in a completely updated and revised edition So, you want to move to Italy for six months but you don't speak the language well. How do you look for a job? Your heart is set on buying a farmhouse in Tuscany. What are the legal pitfalls to avoid? You'd like to study in Rome, but your college doesn't have a program. Which schools should you apply to? With all-new information on the Internet and on the effect of the conversion to the euro, this essential companion guide to Italy features - hundreds of addresses and Internet sites, from real estate agencies to job banks - details on visas, banking, taxes, and residency permits - freelance, seasonal, part-time, and full-time employment options - more than two hundred language schools, American colleges, and Italian universities Written by Travis Neighbor Ward and Monica Larner, two seasoned expatriates, Living, Studying, and Working in Italy is packed with candid insider's tips and practical, up-to-date information for travelers of any age.

In recent years, the retirement age for public pensions has increased across many countries, and additional increases are in progress or under discussion in many more. The seventh stage of an ongoing research project studying the relationship between social security programs and labor force participation, Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World: The Capacity to Work at Older Ages explores people’s capacity to work beyond the current retirement age. It brings together an international team of scholars from twelve countries—Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States—to analyze this issue. Contributors find that many—but not all—individuals have substantial capacity to work at older ages. However, they also consider how policymakers might divide gains in life expectancy between years of work and retirement, as well as the main impediments to longer work life. They consider factors that influence the demand for older workers, as well as the evolution of health and disability status, which may affect labor supply from the older population.

After several years of silence and seclusion in Beetlecreek’s black quarter, a carnival worker named Bill Trapp befriends Johnny Johnson, a Pittsburgh teenager living with relatives in Beetlecreek. Bill is white. Johnny is black. Both are searching for acceptance, something that will give meaning to their lives. Bill tries to find it through good will in the community. Johnny finds it in the Nightriders, a local gang. David Diggs, the boy’s dispirited uncle, aspires to be an artist but has to settle for sign painting. David and Johnny’s new friendship with Bill kindles hope that their lives will get better. David’s marriage has failed; his wife’s shallow faith serves as her outlet from racial and financial oppression. David’s unhappy routine is broken by Edith Johnson’s return to Beetlecreek, but this relationship will be no better than his loveless marriage. Bill’s attempts to unify black and white children with a community picnic is a disaster. A rumor scapegoats him as a child molester, and Beetlecreek is titillated by the imagined crimes. This novel portraying race relations in a remote West Virginia town has been termed an existential classic. “It would be hard,” said The New Yorker, “to give Mr. Demby too much praise for the skill with which he has maneuvered the relationships in this book.” During the 1960s Arna Bontemps wrote, “Demby’s troubled townsfolk of the West Virginia mining region foreshadow present dilemmas. The pressing and resisting social forces in this season of our discontent and the fatal paralysis of those of us unable or unwilling to act are clearly anticipated with the dependable second sight of a true artist.” First published in 1950, Beetlecreek stands as a moving condemnation of provincialism and fundamentalism. Both a critique of racial hypocrisy and a new direction for the African American novel, it occupies fresh territory that is neither the ghetto realism of Richard Wright nor the ironic modernism of Ralph Ellison. Even after fifty years, more or less, William Demby said in 1998, “It still seems to me that Beetlecreek is about the absence of symmetry in human affairs, the imperfectability of justice the tragic inevitability of mankind’s inhumanity to mankind.”

Every society throughout history has defined what counts as work and what doesn’t. And more often than not, those lines of demarcation are inextricable from considerations of gender. What Is Work? offers a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding labor within the highly gendered realm of household economies. Drawing from scholarship on gender history, economic sociology, family history, civil law, and feminist economics, these essays explore the changing and often contested boundaries between what was and is considered work in different Euro-American contexts over several centuries, with an eye to the ambiguities and biases that have shaped mainstream conceptions of work across all social sectors.

Though his work was little known outside Italian intellectual circles for most of the twentieth century, anthropologist and historian of religions Ernesto de Martino is now recognized as one of the most original thinkers in the field. This book is testament to de Martino's innovation and engagement with Hegelian historicism and phenomenology--a work of ethnographic theory way ahead of its time. This new translation of Sud e Magia, his 1959 study of ceremonial magic and witchcraft in southern Italy, shows how De Martino is not interested in the question of whether magic is rational or irrational but rather in why it came to be perceived as a problem of knowledge in the first place. Setting his exploration within his wider, pathbreaking theorization of ritual, as well as in the context of his politically sensitive analysis of the global south's historical encounters with Western science, he presents the development of magic and ritual in Enlightenment Naples as a paradigmatic example of the complex dynamics between dominant and subaltern cultures. Far ahead of its time, Magic is still relevant as anthropologists continue to wrestle with modernity's relationship with magical thinking.

Known as the "century of anatomy," the 16th century in Italy saw an explosion of studies and treatises on the discipline. Medical science advanced at an unprecedented rate, and physicians published on anatomy as never before. Simultaneously, many of the period's most prominent artists--including Leonardo and Michelangelo in Florence, Raphael in Rome, and Rubens working in Italy--turned to the study of anatomy to inform their own drawings and sculptures, some by working directly with anatomists and helping to illustrate their discoveries. The result was a rich corpus of art objects detailing the workings of the human body with an accuracy never before attained. "Art and Anatomy in Renaissance Italy "examines this crossroads between art and science, showing how the attempt to depict bone structure, musculature, and our inner workings--both in drawings and in three dimensions--constituted an important step forward in how the body was represented in art. While already remarkable at the time of their original publication, the anatomical drawings by 16th-century masters have even foreshadowed developments in anatomic studies in modern times.