Europe for Visitors Blog

David Farley's An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest Town is now available in paperback.

We profiled An Irreverent Curiosity in an earlier post, and the book is even more appealing at US $12.48 (the Amazon paperback price) than it was as a $25.00 hardcover. (Got a Kindle? The e-book edition is yours for US $9.99.)

Sally Law of The New Yorker interviewed David Farley about the book last August. The result of the interview, a "Book Bench" Q&A, is an entertaining read.

To learn even more about An Irreverent Curiosity and the lost or stolen sacred prepuce that inspired it, visit the author's Web site, www.dfarley.com.

Kimberley Lovato and Laura Schmalhorst's recent book, Walnut Wine & Truffle Groves, is a "culinary adventure" for foodies and Francophiles. The book, which is set in the French départment of Dordogne, "invites readers to pull up a chair and visit the Dordogne the way it should be visited…one bite at a time." 

The authors write: 

"Navigate the back roads, as well as the menus and markets, with newfound excitement and a fork and knife! Through interviews with local home cooks and chefs, visits to local farms and historic sites, market tours, and wineries, readers will discover the true jewels in France’s culinary crown as well as discover the country’s most beautiful and less trod-upon provinces."

Fore more information about the authors and their culinary adventure, visit Walnutwineandtrufflegroves.com. To read excerpts and view photos from the lavishly-illustrated book, see the "Look inside!" sample pages at Amazon.com.

Looking for a last-minute gift book? Head to your local bookseller (or to Amazon, if you must and buy David Farley's An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest Town. The book, which was published a few months ago, is the story of travel writer David Farley's attempts to track down Jesus Christ's foreskin.

And no, that's neither a joke nor an act of blasphemy, as you'll learn from this summary of the book on the author's Web site: 

"Farley recounts how the relic passed from Charlemagne to the papacy to a marauding sixteenth-century German soldier before finally ending up in Calcata, where miracles occurred that made the sleepy town a pilgrimage destination. Over the centuries, as Catholic theology evolved, the relic came to be viewed as something of an embarrassment, culminating in a 1900 papal decree that threatened excommunication on anyone who spoke of or wrote about the relic.

"An Irreverent Curiosity (Gotham Books/Penguin) interweaves this history with the curious landscape of Calcata, a beautiful and untouched medieval village set atop four-hundred-fifty-foot cliffs, which now, due to the inscrutable machinations of Italian bureaucracy, is a veritable counterculture coven. Blending history, travel, and perhaps the oddest story in Christian lore, An Irreverent Curiosity is a weird and wonderful tale of conspiracy and misadventure."

I've read An Irreverent Curiosity, and I'll happily cast my vote with the New York Times reviewer who wrote: 

"[Farley's] ribald detective story ... is like a cross between The Da Vinci Code and Life of Brian ... a charming yarn."

To learn more about An Irreverent Curiosity, or to order the book, visit David Farley's Web site at www.dfarley.com.

- Durant Imboden