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Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy | 
 enlarge | Author: Norman Lewis
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $3.65
You Save: $11.30 (76%)
New (21) Used (13) from $3.64
Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 143485
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.6
ISBN: 0786714387
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.53
EAN: 9780786714384
ASIN: 0786714387
Publication Date: January 2, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
As a young intelligence officer stationed in Naples following its liberation from Nazi forces, Norman Lewis recorded the lives of a proud and vibrant people forced to survive on prostitution, thievery, and a desperate belief in miracles and cures. The most popular of Lewis's twenty-seven books, Naples '44 is a landmark poetic study of the agony of wartime occupation and its ability to bring out the worst, and often the best, in human nature. In prose both heartrending and comic, Lewis describes an era of disillusionment, escapism, and hysteria in which the Allied occupiers mete out justice unfairly and fail to provide basic necessities to the populace while Neapolitan citizens accuse each other of being Nazi spies, women offer their bodies to the same Allied soldiers whose supplies they steal for sale on the black market, and angry young men organize militias to oppose "temporary" foreign rule. Yet over the chaotic din, Lewis sings intimately of the essential dignity of the Neapolitan people, whose traditions of civility, courage, and generosity of spirit shine through daily. This essential World War II book is as timely a read as ever.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
One of the best books you will ever read August 24, 2008
This wonderful book is as powerful as it is wonderful and it is as applicable to today and to all wars as it is wonderful and powerful. This book has deep insights as to how war is really fought, how huge bureaucracies are ugly blunt instruments of war, how occupied people cope, survive and live, and how naive well intentioned souls are awakened in the ugly reality of it all. This is a book for life.
 Required Reading for NeoCons April 29, 2008
I group this book with Eric Newby's "Love and War in the Appenines" for unsentimental and direct views of the corrupting power of war that use Italy as examples. Liberation seems such a romantic idea that one can hardly resist it, and yet here we can easily read and understand that true liberation takes a lot more than military objectives and shouting in congress.
Lewis's eye was remarkable in one so young. I hope that both these books have found their way to the library at West Point. It is perhaps too much to ask that they should be read anywhere inside the beltway.
Our failed occupation of Iraq, What does this teach us? April 27, 2008
Can a foreign military "successfully" occupy another country? Where can we look for historical lessons to our clusterf**k in Iraq. What are our boys reading in West Point? Is there large scale prostitution and venereal disease..Are there markets openly selling stolen U.S. military items.. Where are ordinary Iraqi's getting $ to survive with their economy is shambles? Lots of questions.
Tragi/comedy February 10, 2008
Naples 44 is a beautifully crafted account of allied occupation in Naples. Norman Lewis describes, with his usual gentle irony, the unique lifestyle of Neapolitans and how they survive abject poverty.
He has an eye for the absurd whilst retaining his compassionate love of humanity.
A Vivid Portrait of the Neopolitan People in Desperate Times December 14, 2007
When I was younger I knew an Italian-American veteran who spent time in Naples at roughly the time covered by this book. His stories while entertaining always seemed a bit exagerated to me. Now, after reading Norman Lewis' account of those days I owe my long departed friend an apology for having doubted him.
This is a remarkable account from a gifted observer. Lewis as a British intelligence officer assigned to the Area occupied by American forces immediately following the expulsion of the Germans was in a unique position to observe many aspects of the struggles and adaptations of the locals under these extraordianry conditions. The ingenuity and superstition of the Italian people is displayed from a point of view that is neutral in it's judgements while sparing the reader nothing of the darker side of the stuggle to survive at the same time.
As somone who has read extensively about WWII I was surprised this one got by me for so long. I stumbled on it while browsing Amazon and highly recommend it to anyone interested in the War ,Italy or just a good entertaining read.
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