If you were to ask those of us behind the Italian American Podcast what it is that drives us or what keeps us coming back to create a new show week in and week out, it’s a safe bet that you’d get a unanimous answer… Passione! That borderline-obsessive passion that we share for what we do is a familiar feeling to Italians of all stripes, and best-selling author Dianne Hales thinks La Passione might just be the thing that unites Italians around the world!

In her latest book, La Passione: How Italy Seduced the World, the woman who brought us the New York Times bestseller La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language, and Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered, now leads us on “a jubilant exploration of how Italy transformed the Western world’s most vibrant passions—from literature to art, music to movies.”