Is cappuccino a drink or an epicurian fantasy? Surely the frothy concoction evokes images of whipped cream, lazy Roman afternoons, lusty Fellini films and balmy bistro nights even among the least imaginative among us. But where did this wonderful drink come from? Read and learn as you sip away.

The two years I spent in Italy in the 1970s marked in some ways the best times of my life. I was a student in a small Umbrian city, (Perugia, where they make all that wonderful candy that does all those not so wonderful things to your teeth, but who cares). There I learned more from living each day than I ever gleaned from any version of Dante’s Inferno and/ or Paradiso.