Introduction

In 1957 I traveled to Italy for the first time and fell madly in love with the countryside, the art and architecture, the people, the culture, and the food. In other words, I became a fanatic Italophile. While traveling I had picked up rudiments of the language, using a pocket dictionary and considerable chutzpah. When I went back to graduate school in art and architecture, I enrolled in a basic Italian class so that I would have some grammar to go with the nouns and adjectives, in anticipation of a return.