Where can I get accurate historical and cultural information on Sicily?
You might start with our Magazine, updated monthly, or our Links or Books pages, but most of the cultural and historical information on the Internet, and even the information found in most magazines, is notoriously inaccurate. We suggest a bookstore or public library. Remember that guide books are not history books; we even found one on Sicily that describes Count Roger de Hauteville as an Englishman! Some of the best histories are published in Italian and available in Sicilian book stores (particularly those in Palermo along Via Maqueda between the Quattro Canti and Cathedral). Here are a few suggestions if you don’t read Italian. Denis Mack Smith’s two-volume work, A History of Sicily, is excellent, though flawed in certain respects (with outdated geological and anthropological information, and a few uninformed observations about organized crime). The one-volume edition is a condensed version. Steven Runciman’s landmark work, The Sicilian Vespers, is a good medieval history of Sicily
