The Real America Revealed Through the Eyes of an Italian

CIAO, AMERICA!, By Beppe Severgnini, Broadway, $21.95

As the rest of the world frets over how the U.S. stands on United Nations policies, global warming, Middle East hostilities and just about everything else, it’s reasonable for an American to wonder: What do these foreigners know, and what do they think about the smaller day-to-day workings of these United States?

One gentle, amusing way to approach that question is this slim, wry book from Severgnini, an Italian newspaper columnist and correspondent for the Economist who spent a year in Washington, D.C., in the mid-1990s and returned briefly in 2000. He knows plenty about us now.

And reading him, you get a sometimes startling perspective on minutiae from his daily life as a Georgetown renter: his great difficulty acquiring a credit card (because, of course, he has no debts); his astonishment at the ease of setting up a new telephone number (one phone call); his hilarious and disquieting account of himself and his Washington neighbors, cowering in the face of defiantly unreliable city garbage men.

“America reveals itself in the little things,” Severgnini writes. “And to discover them, you need the inquisitiveness of a new arrival and the patience of a beachcomber, one of those mildly inappropriate individuals who roam the shores in search of small treasures. The seashore is America. The mildly inappropriate individual is me.”

Structured to follow him through the months of his year here, Severgnini’s book displays a consistently light touch, remarkable given that his prose was first written for an Italian audience, then passed through the filter of translator Giles Watson.

In the course of the author’s year, you do realize that Georgetown, with its polymath population and general affluence, may not be a perfect stand-in for American society at large. Also, for this 21st century reader, some of Severgnini’s riffs on life in the ‘90s seemed too stale to save between hard covers, most notably his quips on home computing and the ironies of staging the 1994 World Cup competition in America.

Also, there are the inevitable generalizations. Some are irresistible. Of a Thanksgiving gathering, he writes that “we don’t say thanks in Italy--if we’re satisfied, we merely refrain from complaining.”

But as in so many books of casual cultural encounter--even gems like Adam Gopnik’s French tale of two years ago, “Paris to the Moon”--the text loses traction with just about every sweeping pronouncement, and gains it with each detail from the supermarket or backyard. Severgnini is great with those smaller moments, from house-hunting to the art of yard sale management. Here he is on being an Italian in a sea of American ethnic census statistics:

“We’re not blacks. Neither are we Anglos. Quasi-Hispanics, probably. In that case, we’re going to have to work on our pronunciation of nachos

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CALIFORNIA THE BEAUTIFUL, Photos by Galen Rowell, VIA Books, $16.95

Galen Rowell, who ranks behind Ansel Adams and ahead of just about everybody else among visual chroniclers of California, was among four people killed in a small-plane crash Aug. 11 near Bishop, Calif. The nature photographer’s death at age 61 came just as VIA Books (a creation of the California State Automobile Assn. in cooperation with the Auto Club of Southern California) was releasing a collection of 85 color photos by Rowell with companion California quotations, from Jack London to Joan Didion, compiled by Peter Beren.

The format is curiously small for what would usually be called a coffee-table book--it’s just 6 1/2 inches square--but the price has been reduced commensurately. And Rowell, who hiked and climbed extensively in California’s high country to capture many of his pictures, is in all his color-drenched, wide-angled, Sierra-cherishing glory here. These are the sorts of images that some conservationists call “eco-pornography” -- extraordinary features, theatrically lit, with little room for a homely field or stream in humdrum midday light. But I see the book as self-help. Here are some great places, Rowell and company are telling us. Now go find them.

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TIMEOUT: Rome, Eating & Drinking, Penguin Books, $11.95

This is part of a new series from the people who produce TimeOut magazine, usually an excellent source for night life information in London, Paris and New York. The first batch of these guidebooks includes volumes on Rome and Barcelona, each 220 pages. Their size is pocket-friendly. Their color illustrations are copious. The maps are comprehensible. The prose, produced by staffers in London, is occasionally Eurocentric (if you don’t know that Mr. Whippy is an ice cream snack or that Italy’s soccer team is unlikely to win the Six Nations Rugby Tournament, some punch lines don’t work so well) but witty and thorough.

But what’s this on page 4, and page 8 and page 54? It’s paid advertising, peppered throughout the 220 pages. I expect this in the magazine, and it might not bother me much if these guides were priced lower than comparable others. But Lonely Planet, to name one competitor, has managed to put out its own new condensed guide to Barcelona for $11.99 with no ads. It’s good to be assured (as we are on page 2) that TimeOut’s reviewers visit eateries and bars anonymously and make no deals to provide positive coverage. But nobody goes to a movie theater to see the commercials beforehand (even if they’re for a fine newspaper), and nobody buys an independent guidebook to read pitches from restaurateurs.

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Calendar writer Christopher Reynolds’ travel books column runs twice a month.