People of Florence: A Study in Locality

First Published in 1968, People of Florence raises the question what makes a city? This is neither a guidebook nor a typical sociological treatise, but the portrait of a people. Trinkets of history are lightly painted in to give background to what the author calls ‘locality’: Florence of today as formed by her past and by the physical conditions of Tuscany. Two principal chapters are intimately concerned with the flood of 1966. The author also takes us through the relation between the individual liberties in Florence and the bureaucratic controls of the Government in Rome, along with the architecture, art, music, theatre, song birds, flowers, trees, food and drink, public ceremonies, games, ancient rites, and human stories. This book will be an interesting read for scholars and researchers of sociology, urban history, social anthropology, cultural studies and for general readers interested to know about Florence.