Others say...

"Awesome way to study Italian"
In my opinion, this is a really good way to study Italian without going through those boring lessons, endless drills, and word repetitions. You read a story (not all of them are incredibly interesting) in English while learning Italian. After you have practiced for awhile, you can try to read the story in Italian and see how much you learned.

"Good for learning Italian"
OK I haven't read much italian literature, but the italian stories I have read mostly seem to follow this rule:
You start with a problem...people work towards solving that problem...things end up much worse than you could have ever possibly imagined...
so its like American stories just instead of a happy ending, something terrible happens...or they just don't really end, the author just seems to stop writing...

but I digress...this book is a great tool for learning italian...I learned a lot, especially about conjugating verbs and such...vocab as well...even though I didn't like some of the stories, they weren't that bad and some of them I thought were entertaining...the one by Machiavelli, "Belfagor" I really liked...but the real great thing about these books is you are learning Italian w/o realing studying it...you know what I mean? Its not fun to sit in class but it is fun to read stories...you will be learning a lot more than you realize...sometimes I will try to read a whole story w/o looking at the translation, other times I will look at the translation for each line...its fun to go back and see how close you were to figuring out what really happened...

OK my favorite parts about this book were the vocab section and questionnaire at the end...the questions check to see if you understand what is going on, and the vocab has a many words, most of which I had never heard before...A great book...

"Invaluable to the Serious Student of Italian"
I bought this book many years ago. The stories are short, between 5-20 pages each. They span many periods of history and is a great introduction to some of the great Italian writers.

Most of all, it really helps the Italian student bridge the gap between "classes" and "real Italian."

Although my speaking abilities were limited to an Intermediate Level, my classmates in a recent course I took thought that my vocabulary was tremendously large in comparison to their own.

I hold this book and another book by Penguin to be responsible. After reading these stories, I can read most anything in print and get the "gist" of what is being said.

"Highly recommended for serious students of Italian."
For the serious advanced student of Italian, I know of no better book to use as first step in exploring Italian literature. Translations are literal enough to give accurate correspondence to Italian, but literate enough to stand on their own in English as well: a marvelous achievement.

"Great source for studying Italian at intermediate level."
The short stories are entertaining, and they cover Italian writers from Machiavelli to Pirandello.

But the reason I bought this book is to study Italian. With Italian on the left and English on the right, this collection presents students with an easy way to build vocabulary and sample "literary" writing not found in regular textbooks.

Students should have at least an intermediary knowledge of Italian, in order to at least recognize the various past tenses employed.