John Mariani celebrates Italian food and la dolce vita

After publishing “The Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink’’ in 1998, John Mariani, author and food correspondent for Esquire and Bloomberg, revisited the subject with “How Italian Food Conquered the World’’ last year. “Things had changed so radically over the last 10 years in terms of Italian food, the perception of it, and its invasiveness,’’ Mariani says.