Eloquent and assured, Mary McCarthy's The Stones of Florence beckons the reader on a brisk but sweeping tour of the birthplace of the Renaissance and the legendary home of the Medici, Dante, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and other giants of the age. Her keen observations of this famously alluring city speak to Florence's persistent character and magnetism-and the attraction it exerted over the first major wave of American tourists to postwar Europe....

Traces the author's decision to quit her job and travel the world for a year after suffering a midlife crisis and divorce, a journey that took her to three places in her quest to explore her own nature and learn the art of spiritual balance.