Naples Declared, a Walk Around the Bay by Benjamin Taylor is the April Book Club selection.

A personal tour through the beauty and squalor of Naples profiles the city’s natural and human-made characteristics around its bay while sharing passionate, lighthearted insights into the ancient city and its culture.

Presents a tour through the beauty and squalor of Naples, profiling the city’s natural and human-made characteristics while sharing lighthearted insights into the ancient city and its culture.

It is a city of seemingly irreconcilable opposites, simultaneously glorious and ghastly. And it is Ben Taylor’s remarkable ability to meld these contradictions into a whole that makes this the exciting and original book it is. He takes his stroll around the bay with the acute sensitivity of a lover, the good humor of a friend, and the wisdom of a seeker who has immersed himself in all aspects of this contrapuntal culture. His curiosity leads him to many byways, both real and metaphoric, and his passion for this ancient city and its people becomes, in his graceful prose and amusing anecdotes, irresistibly contagious.

Publication     New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, [2012] ©2012

Description     xxiii, 205 pages: illustrations (some color), map; 22 cm