The Dodge Club; Or, Italy in Mdccclix

In 1859, three Yankee adventurers form the Dodge Club, a society dedicated to one noble purpose: not getting fleeced in Europe. Dick and Buttons, joined by the Senator and their reluctant companion Mr. Figgs, set out from Paris (where soldiers march off to war in the streets) for Italy with more optimism than money, armed with nothing but cheek and a desperate hope that their American savvy will see them through. What follows is a rollicking picaresque comedy of cultural collisions, where every gondolier is a potential con artist, every menu is a cipher, and the gap between what these innocents expect from the Continent and what they actually find is vast enough to drive a locomotive through. De Mille writes with sharp observational wit about the particular anxieties of Americans abroad: the terror of being the rube, the desperate performance of sophistication, the horrified discovery that European cunning runs deeper than Yankee ingenuity. It's a time capsule of transatlantic attitudes wrapped in an adventure story, and it remains surprisingly fresh: the jokes about getting ripped off, mispronouncing things, and failing to understand the locals haven't aged a day.