"…an engaging, instructional, illuminating, entertaining and highly informative book that anyone interested in food, politics, and stylistic writing should read … beautifully written … by a devoted gourmet, and deserves a prominent place in any public and private library." — Winesworld's Magazine

"Italian food epitomizes pleasurable eating. Not just the kind that satisfies hunger. It certainly does that, but it also awakens the palate, soothes the soul, stimulates the mind, and offers occasions for—even requires—companionable socializing. In keeping with its topic, so does this delightful and erudite book … [it] is a book to savor slowly and by chapter—much like courses in a meal—in which events and people, politics and ethnicity are shown to be connected in surprising ways through food." — Italian American Review

"Anthony Di Renzo's essays do exactly what Dr. Johnson said literature should do: entertain and instruct. But they also flay, skin, skewer, grill, boil, and toast their subject, be it food, family, history, ethnicity, politics, or the self. At their best, and in faultless prose, they reveal the workings of an examined life with deft wit and pathos." — Gastronomica

"…Di Renzo's work is a passionate and broad canvas of history, globalization, gastronomy, racism, immigration, and the stratification within 'classless' American society through scholarship and his own ethnic experiences." — Maria Lisella, Feile-Festa

"With much dash, artistry, originality, keen politics, and classic erudition, Di Renzo takes the reader on a witty and heartfelt romp through history, gastronomy, and the ethnic experience. You don't have to be Italian to enjoy this appetizing and engaging book. Bravo, Antonio!" — Michael Parenti, author of God and His Demons and Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader

"What a treat this book is! Shaped by extraordinary scholarship and simmered in cosmopolitan wisdom, Bitter Greens is at once a memoir, a culinary history, and a social commentary. And Anthony Di Renzo's prose is mouth-wateringly delicious, his stories both savory and bittersweet." — Sandra M. Gilbert, coauthor of The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, Second Edition

"Part history of food, part personal essay, part tour of Italy (both ancient and modern) as well as New York, Di Renzo's Bitter Greens is a delightful, entertaining book that takes the form of a delectable multicourse meal. It is a smart and engaging work you'll be sure to talk about; a pleasure you'll want to share with family and friends." — Tony Ardizzone, author of In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu: A Novel

"Given the many cartoonish depictions of Italian American culture (and no aspect of that culture is more lampooned than its relationship to food), Bitter Greens is a welcome tonic. Di Renzo's essays, with their wide-ranging erudition, make food the launching pad for his explorations of the big questions of family, memory, and self. And they show how the answers to so many of these questions lie at the bottom of a bowl of macaroni or inside the casing of a salame." — Lucia Perillo, author of Inseminating the Elephant and I've Heard the Vultures Singing: Field Notes on Poetry, Illness, and Nature

"Anthony Di Renzo has written a scrumptious book: part history, part memoir, part travel guide, part cookbook, in prose as savory and chewy as a serving of Puntarelle con Salsa di Alici. But Bitter Greens is more than a side dish: it's a multiple-course feast of erudition." — Peter Selgin, author of Life Goes to the Movies: A Novel

Preface
Aperitif

Keynote
Lucullan Feasts

Antipasto
Abruzzese Soppressata, Mozzarella, and Olives
Exiles from Cockaigne

Primo
Calabrian Onion Soup
Tears and Onions

Secondo
Tripe Alla Romana
A Load of Tripe

Contorno
Apulian Broccoli Rabe Salad
Bitter Greens

Dolce
Sicilian Chocolate Cake
Dark Chocolate

Caffè
Neapolitan Espresso
Coffeehouse Philosophy

After-Dinner Speech
Lunch with Trimalchio

Envoy
Nightcap
Top of the World

Acknowledgments