“This is an excellent book, a combination of personal history and shrewd social observation, with nuggets of delight at every turn. The narrative isn’t bathed in a romantic glow, like Frances Mayes’ book “Under the Tuscan Sun”; it’s much more practical. Picking up and moving to Italy is perhaps everyone’s dream, but this book lays out in wonderful detail just what such a move entails, beginning with finding a place actually to live, then to getting telephone service installed, to getting one’s children enrolled in school, to learning how to make a living in Italy, to dealing with fraudulent internet charges, and so on. The narrative ends with a wonderfully insightful episode in an Italian hospital, where the author is confined for some weeks. Along the way the reader learns about the variety of Italian toilet seats, the importance of the Madonna, the political career of Silvio Berlusconi, and many other gems. One also learns why the mind-boggling inefficiency of Italian bureaucracy is what sustains the Italian way of life.”

 “Sam’s writing is uncommonly filled with insight, adventure, humanity and humor. His often hilarious accounting of his worrisome episode in the local hospital is a remarkably potent and insightful piece of writing. Even if you’ve never had the opportunity to experience the Tuscan life personally, you can’t close Sam’s book without feeling somehow almost viscerally connected to the world he inhabits and so adroitly brings to life. Through this book, any reader can’t help but vicariously turn a good bit more Tuscan.”