Books like Frederick II — picked by fans

I love being a historian of the early and central Middle Ages. This was a period in which the religious and political conflicts of the later Middle Ages were not yet foregone conclusions, although the faultlines of future conflicts were being laid.

The late thirteenth century, by contrast, was a time of multiple contests on many fronts: the European crusading project continued, the fallout of the conflict between Frederick II and the papacy was still roiling, and the newly powerful kings of European states were competing for influence.

Steven Runciman’s book captures the ferment of this time by focusing on an uprising against Sicily’s French rulers. Although the book was published many years ago, it has never really been matched for its propulsive storytelling and ability to highlight the continuing importance of Sicily as a focal point of broader developments in the Mediterranean.

No other book has inspired my own work as much as this one, although it is about far more than the history of Sicily.

McCormick found extensive evidence for travel and communication in the early medieval Mediterranean—a period in which it was previously thought that long-distance trade had all but stopped after the decline of the Roman Empire.

McCormick’s method was to collect every tiny anecdote he could find about something or someone that went from one place to another across the Sea. All these tidbits of data added up to something huge, and showed clearly that travel and exchange across the Mediterranean did not end when the Roman Empire did. To the contrary, the Mediterranean Sea in these centuries was teeming with people of all faiths, carrying coins and packages of trade goods on ships sailing between Christian and Muslim controlled regions.

His method, of collating masses of data… show more.

Being in Sicily is an incredible feast for the eyes but, if you cannot make it there in person, seeing full-color photographs of its medieval remains is the next best thing.

This book excites me every time I open it, with its gorgeous images of buildings, mosaics, and material objects made of silk, ivory, rock crystal, and more. If you want to visualize the multi-religious and multi-cultural society of Sicily in the Norman era, a book like this is the way to do it. 

The thing that first drew me to medieval Sicily was its history of Muslim habitation.

I am deeply interested in questions of how Muslims, Christians, and Jews interacted with each other during a period of history in which religious identity was one of the most prominent public facts about a person and their community.

Alex Metcalfe is one of the leading scholars studying the Arabic texts that give us insight into the cultures of Muslims in Sicily and southern Italy and their legacies after the Norman conquest of an island that had been in Muslim hands for nearly two centuries. He has written several other works, but this is the one most accessible to a general audience, and the one that covers both Sicily and the southern parts of the mainland that were also strongly impacted by Muslim presence and culture.

This memoir of a Sicilian year beautifully weaves together Simeti’s personal experience in rural Sicily and Palermo with her extensive knowledge of history, mythology, and culinary traditions. Simeti’s honesty truly prepared me for my first trip to Sicily – giving me a full picture of the island’s light and dark sides. 

This book immediately swept me up in its glorious evocation of Sicily: the island's ancient history, the ways of its people, and above all the flavors of the sun-kissed land. In gorgeous prose, American-born Mary Taylor Simeti combines the illuminating insights of an outside observer with a passion for her adopted homeland. The recipes range from the cucina povera that sustained most of Sicily's inhabitants over the centuries to the ornate court cuisine that developed in the 16th century. We also journey to Sicily's convents, where the nuns became famous for their wondrous confections with fanciful names like "Virgins' Breasts" and "Chancellor's Buttocks."

This is an unusual novel in that it shows the lives of British soldiers in Sicily during World War Two, but there is no actual fighting. Instead we see the soldiers’ lives from the inside as they struggle with boredom, frustration, and try to interact with the locals. There are no heroics or sentimental patriotism, instead we see the soldiers in all their humanity, including their weaknesses. Above all it does what all good writing should do, takes you into a vividly believable world of emotion and behavior.  

I love travel, wine, and learning more about the people who create wine. This book ticks all these boxes.

It takes me all across Sicily, one of Italy’s most exciting and dynamic wine regions. In the course of these travels, I get to meet the people who have transformed Sicilian wine from pedestrian to world-class.

Camuto is a masterful storyteller. His descriptions of encounters with winemakers, what they look like, and the meals they share together are as interesting as the up-to-the-minute information he imparts about the wines they are now bringing to the world. This is a must-read for lovers of Sicily and all lovers of Italian wine.

Dr. Gaetano Cipolla is the retired head of the Foreign Language Department at St. John’s University, New York. He has spent his academic career researching and writing about the Sicilian culture and its people in order to counteract the stereotypical image of Sicilians and Italians as primarily spaghetti eaters and mafia. Dr. Cipolla understands the many dialects of the Sicilian language and, through his writings, has reclaimed the literary greatness of forgotten Sicilian writers by translating their poetry and other works. To overcome the pending extinction of Sicilian, he has written and developed a two-part course that teaches the language. His course is steadily being adopted in a number of universities. 

I’m a fan of gangster books and movies, but there’s nothing quite like learning about the real brutality and power of the original Sicilian mafia.

Dickie’s book takes a historical view, showing why that kind of organization developed in Sicily of all places, and how the Sicilians have protected it, and fought against it. The anecdotes are sometimes funny and sometimes truly chilling.

If you’re as interested in the history of organized crime as I am, this is a must read.