Tuscany of Our Dreams, The: Mussolini to Agritourism

D. Medina Lasansky's book should be read by all devotees of the "sweet Tuscany for eye and soul" savored in villas equipped with swimming pools, pasta-making machines, and books on Piero della Francesca. It gives ample, incontrovertible evidence that visitors to "sweet Tuscan" owe their own culinary and aesthetic pleasures to the Fascist programs of rural renewal instituted under Benito Mussolini. Lasansky turns the clock back to look at a region of small farmers being pressured to increase productivity under a Fascist campaign to make Italy self-sufficient and patriotic. The policies succeeded in fusing rural work and culture into a seamless entity quickly given yet greater worth by the discovery of proto-Modern beauty in the Tuscan landscape and vernacular architecture. This book takes the structure of a documentary film as it follows the subsequent history of the real and imagined Tuscany. Large photographs, many reproduced for the first time, set the scene for discussions punctuated by close-ups of the people and the products that have transformed Tuscany into the international oasis John Mortimer dubbed Chiantishire.