Hi everyone!

I'm looking for a, good ;-), web article about the construction of an italic.
Small history about cursive fonts...
Advantages/disavantages of cursive vs. slanted (oblique)...
Why some fonts have lots of cursive characters...and others dont
Diferences in italic from Sans and Serif...
What can we consider a good italic, etc...
I want to learn more about it.
Can be one article or lots of them. I try to google it but no luck and I'm sure that the typophile comunity has so much input about this...

Thanks in advance
António