A powerful tool for readers of Calvino at all levels (it has certainly enhanced the quality of discussion at undergraduate level in the two years since its publication) but it is indispensable to those who are interested in literature as an intellectual catalyst within a culture. Both as a study of the mechanisms of an author's creativity (see, for example, the enticing web of associations generated by the Prefazione to Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno , itself a reflection on the representation of personal and collective experience) and as a study of contemporary aesthetics, this volume shows McLaughlin to be not just well-versed in facts but a stimulating interlocutor with Calvino.