Songbirds, Truffles, and Wolves: An American Naturalist in Italy [Paperback]

Gary Paul Nabhan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1994

Arousing the mind and the appetite, Nabhan tells of his adventures as he walks through northern and central Italy along a route used by St. Francis of Assisi. From his talks with peasant farmers and others rich experiences, Nabhan offers profound reflections on the spirit with precise observations of nature as well as lively asides on Italian cuisine.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

A journey from Florence to Assisi in the steps of St. Francis proves as much a spiritual quest as an eclectic scientific inquiry for enthnobotanist Nabhan (Enduring Seeds, 1989). While recovering from a painful divorce, Nabhan, who's part Lebanese, decided to walk the two hundred miles between Florence and Assisi ``in part to ponder my Mediterranean roots, and in part to learn of the land of my saint, San Francisco.'' Before he set off, he made a brief visit to Genoa, home of Christopher Columbus, where, in a local market, he found prickly pears, native to the Americas but now at home in the Old World: This sort of cross- fertilization of plants and seeds--as well as of cultures--is one of the author's subtexts here. Another is the need for ``rough country land where we can be truant and not have to pay to get in or be inspected on the way out.'' Nabhan discovered that little of such wilderness is left in Italy: The wolves have gone; the forests where chestnuts or truffles grow are planned; and even the ancient oaks at St. Francis's shrine, protected as artifacts rather than as living organisms, are dying from benign attention. Civilization is always close by, providing a mix of old and new: rock music and the waltz at an Umbrian corn festival (leading Nabhan to a brief history of corn in Italy, where it once caused pellagra among the peasants); farmers cultivating ancient native crops alongside New World imports like tomatoes and sunflowers; the tasting of the season's first truffles, dug up by dogs rather than by the traditional pigs. Throughout, Nabhan relates his experiences with a beguiling candor that's spoiled by only a few obvious thoughts and insights about human relationships. An enjoyable mix of information and opinion from a writer whose delight in nature is always wise and thoughtful, never sentimental or smug. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (December 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140239723
• ISBN-13: 978-0140239720
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #870,263 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars HUMAN DISCOVERIES, April 1, 2001

By 

MOVIE MAVEN (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Songbirds, Truffles, and Wolves: An American Naturalist in Italy (Paperback)

If, one week ago, someone told me that I'd be reading & loving a book subtitled "An American Naturalist in Italy," I'd have laughed.

This is a witty and charming book (a very quick read) which will get to you even if you are NOT a naturalist---even if, like I, you hardly know what a naturalist is or does!

Nabhan, with a friend, hiked through the Tuscan and Umbrian countryside, interviewing natives and chronicling his discoveries and stories: an old farmer shares wine and his knowledge of how to find truffles simply because Nabhan was walking to Assisi and the farmer was named after Saint Francis; an elderly couple waltzes in a town square and becomes, in Nabhan's words, "the dance, itself;" another man explains to the author why grapes need to be trellised & how beautiful they are when alternated with maples; a woman explains how a she-wolf was tamed and fed by town residents. The tales are all about the land and the people who have lived there for centuries. And they are all fascinating.....simple, true stories that will help one believe, again, in the human race.

This book is a perfect companion to that other fine book of Italian (i.e. human) discovery: "Under The Tuscan Sun" by Frances Mayes.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Flawed Judge, September 27, 2008

By 

MS "MSB" (Madison, WI, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Songbirds, Truffles, and Wolves: An American Naturalist in Italy (Paperback)

As a naturalist, Nabhan has a keen eye. He can assess landscapes, crops and architecture with some skill. However, he runs into trouble when he persists in judging his fellow human beings. He is highly critical of others, not at all of himself. For example, a chapter on use of corn in peasants' diet blames the consequent rise in pellagra on their failure to wash the corn in lime,as Indians did, providing calcium. The huge majority of Italiansliving in remote country areas would never have heard of this remedy, and so their failure to use it could not reasonably be blamed on ethnocentrism. It's also common for Nabham to blame the Umbrian society in which he travels for not being wild enough, remote enough. He seems to have little understanding of the desperate poverty in which isolated Umbrian communities existed in the past. He even finds fault that truffle-hunters now use dogs rather than pigs in the hunt. The explanation, a simple one, is that hunters find it easier to extract a truffle from a dog's mouth rather than wrestle it away from a 200-pound tusked boar who's determined to eat it.

Although Nabham's whole journey is supposedly focused on a pilgrimage to Assisi, when he actually gets there he is (unsurprisingly, given his character) disappointed. He even finds cause to be disgusted when a well-meaning fellow pilgrim points out the fact that there is no animal shelter of any kind in Assisi, that suffering animals are without help or protection, and that this should be remedied. Nabham's theory is that the animals should remain "wild," and he fears that they will be "tamed" if they're helped. He seems ignorant of the extent to which St. Frances, and other villagers, helped and fed the Wolf of Gubbio.
Throughout the book, Nabham refers to a painful divorce he has gone through and the extent of his suffering. By the end of the book, so self-satisfied and unreflective does he appear that the reader is firmly on the unseen ex-wife's side.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightful!, June 20, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Songbirds, Truffles, and Wolves: An American Naturalist in Italy (Paperback)

I'm ordering several copies to give as gifts! This book touched my heart.