«The country to which we belong is not, as rhetoric would have it, the one we love, but the one we are ashamed of, or of which we can be ashamed»: this sentence, taken from the essay that gives its title to Carlo Ginzburg's new book, aroused, after a moment of bewilderment, the agreement of a wide range of people, even if the weight of shame varies according to the times and from country to country.

But the constraint that derives from shame invites us to reflect on the limits of the very notion of the individual: the common thread running through the essays collected here, which obliquely address an author, a book, an image, a phrase, even a word. The in-depth analysis of specific cases paves the way for a series of generalisations, for answers that provoke further questions. It seems legitimate to talk about microhistory in relation to this cognitive strategy, but the results are more important than the labels.

Readers are invited to share in the joy of research and the encounter with the unexpected.