100 books like The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

I’m including one book from long ago and far away – fourteenth-century Italy – because it leaped out at me from the bookshelf.

The Decameron is the most artistically complete written story about face-to-face storytelling – though I also love its rivals, One Thousand and One Nights and The Canterbury Tales!

The book opens with the bubonic plague that devastated Florence in 1348. Ten wealthy young friends, women and men, leave the stricken city to vacation in the countryside. While servants prepare lavish meals, the friends spend their days relaxing, dancing – and telling naughty stories. The narrator delights in describing their reactions to each other’s storytelling.

Yes, stories can be holy and powerful, but sometimes we just need them to clown around for us! Many translations are available – read one that feels playful. 

Researching the trials and tribulations of a Renaissance food taster meant that I had to become familiar with the court cuisine of the period, the ingredients used in their preparation, and most vitally, the politics of the kitchen. I was delighted to find that many of Platina’s recipes can still be enjoyed today; I have made cabbage stuffed with walnuts, chicken fried with diced lemon, and my personal favorite, cherry cheesecake.

I highly recommend the works of Pietro Aretino. I love satire, and Aretino was a satirist for the ages. I admired his raw courage, for he spared no one—including kings and popes—on his way to earning the title “Scourge of Princes.” He died in his early sixties, reportedly from “laughing too much.” I cannot imagine an epitaph I would rather have engraved on my headstone.

This book presents six vignettes of sex and violence plucked by Thomas Cohen from the archives of the papal governor of sixteenth-century Rome.

I love Cohen’s passion for telling a good story without losing sight of its broader historical significance. Examining the everyday lives of people in the streets, Cohen reveals how a clash between the contradictory currents of Italian Renaissance society fueled much of its conflicts and discontents.

On the one hand, Christian religion preached mercy, forgiveness, and community, on the other the compelling codes of honor, familial loyalty, and unwritten social rules promoted violence and vengeance.

The book also reveals how women and other socially marginalized figures could navigate and manipulate these codes to find space and freedom in a world dominated by powerful men. 

This book is a fantastic, broad overview of the Italian Renaissance (or rinascimento, the term Ruggiero prefers and which his subjects would have recognized). The Italian Rinascimento was a period, according to Ruggiero, of vibrant cities, social change, and cultural expression, in which intellectuals, politicians, and artists both looked back to an idealized classical past and forward to uncharted territory.

I love the way this book focuses on issues that preoccupied the people he studies and incorporates topics often absent from works on the Renaissance, including women, sexuality, economics, disease and death, and religion, among others. Even more important, perhaps, is that it is clear, accessible, and engaging, and demonstrates a wealth of knowledge developed over an illustrious career as a historian of early modern Italy.

This book tells the fascinating story of Ruth Asawa’s journey to becoming a sculptor and passing on these ideals to the next generation through her work as an advocate for arts education The illustrations are beautifully rendered and colorful. Inspirational for budding artists everywhere, the book also contains teaching tools and an art activity.

Rilke, a shy young Austrian poet goes to Paris in 1902 to write a book about Rodin, a famous and famously difficult sculptor twice his age. Not only do they become friends but the ideas they shared about art and creativity are influential to this day. Guest appearances by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, George Bernard Shaw, and many other notable artists and writers.

I am an art dealer who is also a writer so I was fascinated to learn about the relationship between Rodin, a great sculptor whose work I know very well, and the young poet Rilke, whose work I knew little about. Art and poetry come from the same wellspring of imagination and both artist and poet were inspired by each other despite the difference in their age and practice.

Ruth Asawa’s art and life are inspirational and anyone reading this book will discover why. The Japanese American artist’s life was filled with challenges from contracting diphtheria, to being forced to live in a concentration camp, to marrying across racial lines when most states banned it, to contracting lupus in middle age. Yet, her strong work ethic and creative passion prevailed, spawning a new art form of hanging looped-wire sculptures. The last two photos in the book show Asawa inside and surrounded by her organic-looking sculptures, conveying a symbiotic relationship between the artist and her art. There is a meditative mood to these Imogen Cunningham photos that match the experience of seeing Asawa’s pieces in real life. When I finished reading this book, I felt bathed in Asawa’s beautiful spirit.  

My favorite novelist. Laureate of Broken People. Criminally underappreciated. In 1987, 15 years before I was lucky enough to be published, I wrote to Yates after I got his address from his daughter Monica, who was dating my fellow stand-up comic friend, some unknown guy named Larry David. In the letter, I revealed that I had just stolen his out-of-print 1969 novel about a post-WWII mother and homecoming son from the NYC Public Library and that it would always be my favorite book of his because it was the only one I had not yet read. He wrote back that it was his favorite work as well, then added, “I admire comics because it is much easier to break people’s hearts than to make them laugh.” (Spoiler alert: Larry David turns out okay…)