"A brilliant, thorough, utterly mad book, the product of the most admirable sort of enthusiasm: total. You like soccer, you don't like soccer, it doesn't matter. If you think of yourself as a serious fan, if you want to continue on the path towards enlightenment and take your devotion to another level, you'd best check out the standard being set here." --ESPN.com On one level, Brilliant Orange is about a people whose unique point of view has led to the most enduring arts, the weirdest architecture, and a bizarrely cerebral form of soccer--Total Football--that led in 1974 to a World Cup finals match with arch-rival Germany, as well as to a devastating loss against Spain in 2010. On another, the book also offers, as a 5-star reviewer put it: "insight into the Dutch mindset beyond football. You learn about Dutch history, art, and society while learning about their great players and the total football. You don't actually need to be a football fan to enjoy the book." "One of those strangely informative books that will entertain those who have little interest in either soccer or the Netherlands." -- The Economist "Wry, obsessional, digressive, deep. This is football as art, metaphor, and cultural signifier." -- The Guardian

Imagine the River Tiber as an alimentary tract. Picture a hungry saint. Think of erotic Renaissance fruit paintings, transubstantiation and a tiramisu cafe where magic issurelyon the menu...This highly original interpretation of Rome's history, culture, art and religion takes the form of a book about food that's not really about food at all. In Al DenteWinner takes us on a stroll through the city as he muses on all things comestible and much else besides. We learn about Rome as metropolis and necropolis, about tasty vineyard snails and the food-and-sex scandal that sent Saint Jerome packing. The cinematic greats such as Argento, Fellini and Ferreri are discussed alongside historical political satire where grocery orgies were art and the penis was the subject of hagiographies. There are the bloodthirsty antics of an eighteenth-century executioner who worked for the pope, stories of immolation, architecture and artichokes, and a telephone interview with a nun who makes Eucharistic wafers. Winner is a master of wit with a seemingly insatiable appetite for peculiar detail, and Al Dente provides an intriguing new portrait of a remarkable city - a veritable trifle of Roman bedrock and apogee, cosmos and counterculture to be devoured with gusto. Buon appetito...