In early 1999, George Negus signed off from ABC-TV"s Foreign Correspondent program and took a much-publicised year off in Italy with his journalist partner, Kirsty Cockburn, and their two young sons, Ned and Serge. Trading their bush retreat in Bellingen for an apartment in San Giovanni Valdarno, a village high in the Tuscan hills outside Florence, Negus and his family absorbed themselves completely in the rhythms of Italian life. On one of their forays into the bustling daily market of Florence, they bought a T-shirt which bore the words "Football is life ...all the rest is mere detail!" So began Negus"s journey into the heart and soul of Italian daily life the holy trinity of football, food and politics. The World from Italy: Football, Food and Politics uncovers a side of Italy that you won"t find in guidebooks or Italian travel memoirs, and offers some thought-provoking and challenging insights on how the world works today, how it could work and how, despite their mad rush to nowhere in particular, the Italians still manage to go their own wonderful way.