The Search for Roots

Infobox Book
name = The Search for Roots
title_orig = La ricerca delle radici
translator = Peter Forbes


image_caption = Paperback cover - published by Ivan R Dee.
author = Primo Levi
illustrator =
country = US
publisher = Ivan R Dee
release_date = 2003
media_type = Print (Paperback)
pages = 234
isbn = ISBN 1-56663-504-7

"The Search for Roots: A Personal Anthology" is a compilation of thirty pieces of prose and poetry selected by Italian-Jewish author and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi as part of an abortive project by his original Italian publisher Einaudi to identify the texts which most influenced major Italian writers.

Contents

1 'The Just Man Oppressed by Injustice': The Book of Job, Bible

2 'A Man of No Account': Homer, 'New Coasts and Poseidon's Son',The Odyssey

3 'Why are Animals Beautiful?': Charles Darwin, The Origin ofSpecies

4 'To See Atoms': Sir William Bragg, Concerning the Nature ofThings

5 The Pact with the Mammoths': Joseph-Henri Rosny ame. LaGuerre du Feu

6 'The Hobbies': Giuseppe Parini, The Day

7 'A Deadly Nip': Carlo Porta, Olter Desgrazzi de GiovanninBongee

8 'Dystopia': Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

9 'A Testing Time': Joseph Conrad, Youth

10 The Words of the Father': Ludwig Cattermann, LaboratoryMethods of Organic Chemistry

11 'Better to Write of Laughter Than Tears': Fran9ois Rabelais,Gargantua and Pantagruel

12 'A Different Way of Saying "I"': Thomas Mann, The Tales ofJacob

13 The Romance of Technology': Roger Vercel, Tug-Boat

14 The Dark Well of the Human Spirit': Herman Melville, MobyDick

15 'Survivors in the Sahara': Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sandand Stars

16 The Curious Merchant': Marco Polo, The Travels

17 The Poet-Researcher': Lucretius, On the Nature of theUniverse

18 The Jew on Horseback': Isaac Babel, Collected Stories

19 'An Irrepressible Quibbler': Sholem Aleichem, Tevye theDairyman and the Railroad Stories

20 'Pity Hidden beneath Laughter': Giuseppe Belli, The Sonnets

21 'Why We are Not Happy': Bertrand Russell, The Conquest ofHappiness

22 'We are the Aliens': Fredric Brown, 'Sentry'

23 The Measure of All Things': ASTM D 1382 - 55 T, AmericanSociety for Testing Materials

24 'Urchin Death': Stefano D'Arrigo, Horcynus Orca

25 TV According to Leonardo': Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of theFuture: An Enquiry into the Limits of the Possible

26 'Before and after the Crime': T. S. Eliot, Murder in theCathedral

27 'Death Fugue': Paul Celan, Poems of Paul Celan

28 Tonie the Winterer': Mario Rigoni Stern, Storia di Tonic

29 Trying to Understand': Hermann Langbein, Menschen inAuschwitz

30 'We are Alone': Kip S. Thorne, The Search for Black Holes'

Afterword: The Four Paths of Primo Levi' by Italo Calvino