Balcony Empire

A HUSBAND-AND-WIFE newspaper team (for “Eleanor” figures in almost as many news exploits as “Reynolds”) gives a close-up picture of modern Italy that is lively, anecdotal, sometimes flippant, yet full of keen, observant common sense. The Packards have been stationed in Italy for several years and have also seen fascism on the march in Ethiopia and in Spain. Caught in Rome at the outbreak of the war and interned for several months in Siena (which is one of the better places in the world in which to be interned), they write of Italy from a vantage point of recent observation.