Books: Reflections on the Italians

THE ITALIANS by Luigi Barzini. 352 pages. Atheneum. $6.95.

Some painful, intimate truths are far easier to confess to a chance friend opportunely met than to the closest member of the family. A couple of drinks, a quiet dinner, brandy and cigars before the inn fire—and imperceptibly, from behind the urbanity and wit emerge the true facts of a marriage in shambles or of a mortal sickness. This is exactly the kind of book that Milanese Journalist Luigi Barzini has written to explain to the U.S. the delights and secret deficiencies of his countrymen's manners and morals.

Foreigners have always loved Italy, Barzini...