This book should be required reading for all devotees of Chiantishire, the ?sweet Tuscany for eye and soul' that they savour at great expense in rented villas equipped with swimming pools, pasta-making machines, and books on Piero della Francesca. Medina Lasansky, a professor of the history of architecture at Cornell University, tracks this dream back to the 1920s when Mussolini's programs brought radical change to countryside then cultivated and largely inhabited by farmers. Among the changes were the elevation of la cucina Toscana, detested by tourists of the era, and the discovery of rural architecture as both primordial and proto-modern. The book follows the entwining of Fascist programs and tourism to the present and offers a wealth of photographs, many of them reproduced here for the first time. ILLUSTRATIONS 224 images
