The small family-run publisher Araba Fenice was founded in 1991 and its first works were The Story of Civilization by Will Durant and I Sanssôssì by Augusto Monti, renowned teacher of a generation of Piemontese intellectuals spanning the two world wars. Today the company boasts a catalog of more than 250 titles covering such topics as history, gastronomy, socio-politics, architecture and botany. In addition, they publish an impressive range of fiction, notably the works of Maria Tarditi, whose talents have made her one of the best-selling authors on rural northern Italian life in the first half of the 20th century. Araba Fenice’s edition of Spezie by Jack Turner (originally published in English as Spice: the History of a Temptation) won the prestigious Premio Gusta Minori-Costa Amalfi literary award in 2007.