Alvise Cornaro (c.1484-1566) was the son of a Paduan innkeeper with presumed ties to the patrician Cornaro family of Venice. Highly ambitious, he acquired a name for himself as a businessman, architect, and patron of the arts. Critically ill around age 40 - likely with diabetes and gout - he resolved to abandon his intemperate lifestyle. The strict rules regarding food and drink that he adopted and which led to his recovery are outlined in his most famous treatise, the Vita Sobria (1558). The work, which featured prescriptions for living to 100 years - stressing healthy lifestyle, proper diet, and avoidance of excess -became an international success. This edition offers the most comprehensive and faithful version of this early modern classic ever available in English, and includes Cornaro's Aggionta ("Addition"), translated here for the first time. An introductory essay by the late Marisa Milani offers biographical background and analysis and discusses the work's publication history. The volume also presents letters by Cornaro's contemporaries commenting on the treatise as well as his Eulogy, now viewed as having been written by Cornaro himself. A foreword by award-winning health journalist Greg Critser speaks to the continuing relevance of Cornaro's fascinating and seminal work.

Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) was among the most important of those philosophers of the twentieth century who grappled with issues of pure aesthetics. The series of lectures written in 1912 as the inaugural address of the Rice Institute in Texas and collected under the title Breviario di estetica (Breviary of Aesthetics) is undoubtedly Croce's definitive study of the arts, and the work remains foundational in the philosophy of aesthetics to this day. It has been translated into several languages and continues to attract a wide readership. In this edition, the Breviary of Aesthetics is presented in a brand new English translation and accompanied by informative endnotes that discuss many of the philosophers, writers, and works cited by Croce in his original text. The new translation deliberately preserves the idiosyncratic use of language for which Croce was famous, and emphasizes his writing style, which, together with that of Galileo Galilei, is considered to be among the most lucid in Italian literature. An introduction by Remo Bodei discusses the broader impact of the work and places it in historical context. In short, this edition reintroduces a seminal text on aesthetics to a new generation of English-speaking readers, and represents a significant contribution to the Lorenzo Da Ponte Italian Library series.