text: I'll put my opinion first, so there won't be any doubt in your mind.  I don't believe that you can write useful books about national character.  Is there really such a thing as "national character"? People are  just too different, too unpredictable. How well can you predict the  behavior of the people closest to you ?  How well can you predict what  people in your own country will do ?  Would every Italian, if they could  write well, have written the same book as Mr. Barzini ?  I seriously doubt  it.  So what we have in THE ITALIANS is one man's views on the conglomerate  nature of 50 million Italians.  After reading it, I felt even more strongly  that such books, though possibly entertaining, are a waste of time.  An  informative book about unicorns--but do they exist ?   Anthropologists have  been concerned, for many years, in getting the "inside view"--the  view of a culture as seen by the person within it.  While Barzini is  indisputable Italian, he tries to visualize Italians as seen by foreign  visitors, then explain to those of us not lucky enough to travel there, why  they are as visitors see them, or why they are not as foreigners may think.   This is not a successful gambit.  Cultures are based on many general  factors--like history, socio-economic patterns, religion, family,  etc.---but the specific results are just that, specific.  Barzini covers  many topics--the importance of spectacle and giving an illusion of  something rather than actually having that quality; the family vs. the  state; Italian modes of achieving success; the north-south split; Sicily  and the Mafia; and last, the tragedy of Italy's long domination by  foreigners.  But nothing really connects.  There are only superficial,  scattered impressions, nothing very concrete to grasp.  The reader is left  with a handful of stereotypes.  Barzini is at his best when describing the  lives and modus operandi of particular characters in Italian history.   These sections were well-written and interesting.  But his portrayal of  Italian "character" is fuzzy, contradictory, and ultimately,  unconvincing.  Finally, if you are a lover of lists, you will thrill to  this book, because there is a list on nearly every single page.  Myself, I  got pretty tired of those lists.  If you want to know something useful  about Italy, read another book.  If you just want entertainment, which  might support any stereotypes you have about Italians, then this book could  be for you
  