100 books like The Quattro Cento and Stones of Rimini

I was introduced to this at the end of my first year as an architecture student and it introduced me to looking at history through a designer’s eyes.

The original and best edition was in a small format, packed with postage-stamp-sized illustrations. Venturi’s target was the reductive, less-is-more strand of Modern architecture. ‘Less is a bore’, Venturi declared, and he opened my eyes to Mannerism and the Baroque and offered new insights into modern masters such as Aalto and Le Corbusier. 

I bought My Work when I was sixteen and it was the catalyst for a lifetime devoted to architecture.

Written shortly before he died, it is a passionate, personal account of Le Corbusier’s work. Profusely illustrated and beautifully designed, it covers his work as draughtsman and painter, sculptor and writer - and, of course, as - in my view - the greatest architect ever to pick up a tee-square.

At the opening of his exquisite pilgrimage chapel at Ronchamp, Le Corbusier was asked if he had to believe in God to create such a building. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘I had to believe in architecture.’ This is a book by a believer to convert newcomers to the greatest of the arts.

Extracted from Ruskin’s three-volume account of ‘The Stones of Venice’, this was published with an introduction by William Morris, Ruskin’s greatest disciple and founder of the Arts and Crafts movement.

Ruskin’s High Victorian writing style is a barrier to some, but he is the greatest English writer on architecture whose ideas about the importance of craftsmanship and moral value of authentic architecture are an antidote to our present condition.

Extolling the virtues of ‘Savageness’, ‘Changefulness’ and ‘Love of Nature’ his ideas are newly relevant as we address the environmental and social consequences of the Industrial Revolution he detested for its impact on our humanity.

This short book is not about architecture, but about the supremely ‘architectural’ painter, Paul Cézanne, who almost literally ‘built’ his paintings brushstroke by brushstroke.

The author, Rilke, was a great poet and the book consists of a series of letters he wrote home to his wife after almost daily visits to the great memorial exhibition of Cézanne’s work held in Paris 1907, the year after his death. At first he struggled to understand Cézanne’s work, but by the end he offers one of the most profound meditations on aesthetic values I know.

His discovery of Cézanne was, Rilke declared, the most important influence on his poetry and changed his life. These letters changed mine, and I cannot recommend them too highly. 

In modern-day England, a teenager, George (Georgia), has lost her mother. In Renaissance Italy, Francesco del Cossa, a young and talented fresco painter, is motherless as well. Smith gives us a choice: Read George’s half of the book first, or read Francesco’s. Whichever we choose, the lives of these two young people are intricately interlaced. Their sadness and joy; their way of looking at the world around them. George has been to see a fresco in Italy created by Francesco. She is in a complex, post-death conversation with her mother, filled with longing. Francesco (or should that be Francesca?) tells his/her own life story and observes George in hers. I loved the challenging, poetic, playful, and tender nature of this book.

Calvino’s Cosmicomics is perhaps the funniest and most outlandish collections of short stories I’ve ever come across. Think Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time meets Alice in Wonderland. Starting with the Big Bang and charting the entire evolution of the universe and of life on Earth, Calvino’s narrator shape-shifts from a man, to a dinosaur, to a mollusk, a single-cell organism, a subatomic particle, and even a disembodied being. In this linked collection of modern fairy tales, the author displays wild flights of imagination, combining scientific rigor with an uproarious repudiation of logic. Oh, and the narrator’s name is Qfwfq.

I was fortunate to be on sabbatical in Italy in 2005, not long after the salva calcio (save football) decree was passed by Silvio Berlusconi, then Italian Prime Minister and owner of AC Milan.

The legislation was essentially a form of legalised creative accounting which sought to legitimize clubs’ poor financial positions and performance by inflating player asset values on balance sheets.

Jones’ book is not just about football.

But within a fascinating critique of Berlusconi’s Italy, there is brilliant insight into calcio in all its forms – the beauty and joy of what happens on the field, the poetic and intelligent language with which frequently it is discussed in stadiums, cafes, and TV stations, its cultural significance, and, of course, its myriad of political, financial and governance scandals. Andiamo.

Even though I may not be able to visit Italy anytime soon, I decided to go there in spirit.

This book was chosen because it contains a diverse range of literary talents from all walks of life in Italy (poets, musicians, teachers, scientists, and even politicians). Each short story was told in a lively Italian voice. This collection spoke to me about everything that is Italy: landscapes, passions, food, and the country's turbulent political life.

After diving into the first pages, I was immediately transported into the narratives, completely forgetting that I was reading a translation. I was captivated by the stories themselves, a testament to their masterful storytelling. This is a fascinating anthology for readers interested in learning more about Italian culture.

Oxford academic Dr. Roderick Bailey is an expert on the Special Operations Executive who made helpful comments to improve my first WW2 book. I love the little-known stories of Italian and British secret agents that populate this book, which is the official history of SOE’s undercover war against Mussolini's Italy. I enjoy tracing the strategic impact of relatively minor actions. Some efforts succeeded, many failed. There were the attempts to make common cause with the Sicilian Mafia. There was the agent paid and supplied by SOE who was really working for Italian Counter-Intelligence. And there was the SOE agent who parachuted into Lake Como, was immediately captured and expected execution, but survived to provide the secret radio link that enabled Italy to surrender and change sides. 

This is a much-needed antidote to the navel-gazing tendencies of American criminal justice thought.

Reading contemporary treatments, you might almost be fooled into thinking that certain types of police controversies have a specifically American – or at least modern – origin. They don't. In fact, the peculiar challenges of policing and its inevitable discontents might even be universal.

Certainly, they were present at an early stage in medieval Italy, long before the first English "bobbies" ever dawned a uniform. Use-of-force controversies, weapons prohibitions, reluctant witnesses, hostile crowds, simmering beefs among local gangsters: it's all here. Roberts' medieval world so eerily resembles our own when it comes to law enforcement that one ends up surprised to encounter any differences at all.

Here's one, though: medieval town dwellers did not have cell phones with which to film the cops misdeeds. Instead, they hollered for notaries to scribble records on the spot.