How to Do It

How to Do It shows us sixteenth-century Italy from an entirely new perspective: through manuals which were staples in the households of middlebrow Italians merely trying to lead better lives. Addressing challenges such as how to conceive a boy, the manuals offered suggestions such as tying a tourniquet around your husband's left testicle. Or should you want to goad female desires, throw 90 grubs in a liter of olive oil, let steep in the sun for a week and apply liberally on the male anatomy. Bell's journey through booklets long dismissed by scholars as being of little literary value gives us a refreshing and surprisingly fun social history. "e;Lively and curious reading, particularly in its cascade of anecdote, offered in a breezy, cozy, journalistic style."e; -Lauro Martines, Times Literary Supplement "e;[Bell's] fascinating book is a window on a lost world far nearer to our own than we might imagine. . . . How pleasant to read his delightful, informative and often hilarious book."e; -Kate Saunders, The Independent "e;An extraordinary work which blends the learned with the frankly bizarre."e; -The Economist "e;Professor Bell has a sly sense of humor and an enviably strong stomach. . . . He wants to know how people actually behaved, not how the Church or philosophers or earnest humanists thought they should behave. I loved this book."e; -Christopher Stace, Daily Telegraph