{"id":5796,"date":"2010-03-11T06:00:10","date_gmt":"2010-03-11T12:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=5796"},"modified":"2010-03-01T14:42:50","modified_gmt":"2010-03-01T20:42:50","slug":"the-bicycle-runner-by-g-franco-romagnoli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/the-bicycle-runner-by-g-franco-romagnoli\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bicycle Runner by G. Franco Romagnoli"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Like all boys\u00a0growing up in Rome during the 1930’s and 40’s, the author was expected to join Balilla, Mussolini’s Fascist Youth Organization in Italy.\u00a0 An unwilling participant, he counters this activity by becoming a bicycle runner, secretly delivering pamphlets and other materials to members of the Resistance.\u00a0 Later, near the end of the war, after Italy has surrendered to the Allies but is still controlled by a puppet German government, Romagnoli flees Rome to avoid military conscription.\u00a0 Hiding in the remote mountainous countryside, he becomes even more dangerously involved in\u00a0the Resistance, working with both American and British soldiers.<\/p>\n

But The Bicycle Runner,<\/strong><\/em><\/a> which covers\u00a0his life from ages 14-25, is much more than a war story.\u00a0 In fact, it reads much more like a coming-of-age novel, full of the usual adolescent angst weaved together with plenty of humorous anecdotes.\u00a0\u00a0Examples include his descriptions of fearful\u00a0confessions to the local priest (which the entire congregation can hear) \u00a0to his first experiences with love and lust.<\/p>\n

The author may be better known for co-hosting the first American television program on Italian cooking, The Romagnoli’s Table<\/em>, for which he\u00a0 coauthored two companion books.\u00a0 Though he passed away in December of 2008, the love for his native land and culture comes through strikingly clear;\u00a0 the subtitle, A Memoir of Love, Loyalty<\/em> and the Italian Resistance<\/em>, is perfectly appropriate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like all boys\u00a0growing up in Rome during the 1930’s and 40’s, the author was expected to join Balilla, Mussolini’s Fascist Youth Organization in Italy.\u00a0 An unwilling participant, he counters this activity by becoming a bicycle runner, secretly delivering pamphlets and other materials to members of the Resistance.\u00a0 Later, near the[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,1,8],"tags":[378,266,121,1087,206,102],"class_list":["post-5796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-reference","category-staff-picks","tag-children","tag-coming-of-age","tag-italy","tag-resistance","tag-rome","tag-world-war-ii"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-1vu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5796"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6011,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5796\/revisions\/6011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}