Pellegrino Artusi (1820-1911) was an Italian businessman and gastronome. His working life as a silk merchant allowed him to acquire considerable wealth, which was used to fund his passions: literature and food. He self-published the now-famous Italian cookbook La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiare bene(The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well) in 1891 and sold over 200,000 copies before his death. Writing only two decades after the unification of Italy, Artusi was the first to include recipes from all regions of Italy in a single cookbook and helped establish a national Italian identity. Luigi Ballerini teaches modern and contemporary Italian Literature at the University of California. He has translated into English several Italian works.