Mussolini's Italy

Oct 11, 2024 10:18 AM

Author:R J B Bosworth

Mussolini's Italy

For almost all nations the First World War was an unparalleled disaster, but the Italian experience especially was to have catastrophic consequences. Weakened and embittered, trying and failing to come to terms with 600,000 dead and with an entire generation of men militarized by fighting, Italy gave birth to a new form of political life: Fascism.

Richard Bosworth brings to life the period when Italians participated in a vast and ultimately ruinous political experiment under their dictator, Benito Mussolini, and his fascist henchmen. The fascists were the first totalitarians, aiming to reshape Italy and its people utterly. Their regime was based on a cult of violence and obedience. Yet, despite this, Italians found ingenious ways of adapting, limiting, undermining and ridiculing Mussolini's ambitions for them. The heart of this book is its engagement with the life of these ordinary Italians and their families, struggling through terrible times. Bosworth creates a powerful, plausible and entertaining picture of Italian life and a regime which - as the world hurtled towards the cataclysm of the Second World War - was to force humiliation, defeat, invasion and the utter collapse of the nation state.

Reviews

Tom Fort has put together a delightfully discursive book: a gentle rambling through the printed sources interlaced with meetings and outings to give it topicality.

—— Daily Mail

... an entertaining survey of the history of man's ceaseless struggle to answer the big question: do I need to take my Mac?

—— The Independent

... Good humoured and quietly ... The exchange between Johnson's Englishmen may not, in the end, arrive anywhere in particular, but it goes on to this day.Under the Weather is a worthy addition to that long-lived conversation, and a reminder of how compelling it remains.

—— Guardian

A great little book about the British obsession with the climate, it's full of fruitful parcels of meteorological lore.

—— Conde Nast Traveller

... The writing possesses an affable charm and Fort has an appealing layman's enthusiasm for the subject.

—— Financial Times Magazine

An entertaining but rigorous antidote to the fast-and-loose-with-the-truth approach.

—— Radio Times

Wonderfully engaging...Tinniswood has brought the Verneys to life in robustly vivid style

—— Guardian

A wonderful group portrait of an eccentric and ill-starred dynasty. Expertly handling the humorous words and unwise deeds of several generations of Verneys, Adrian Tinniswood breathes life into the turbulent history of an entire century

—— Ross King, author of Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling and Brunelleschi's Dome

Adrian Tinniswood's The Verneys takes us on a fascinating grand tour through a world turned upside down. It is an intimate, engaging, and richly rewarding book, showing the seventeenth century in all its splendor and brutality

—— David King, author of When the World Came to Town and Finding Atlantis

How eloquently Mak rails against the alliance of consumerism and bureaucracy! ... He has a great eye for telling detail... Only a powerful, humane and serious mind could give coherence to mass detail which, however arresting piece by piece, would otherwise soon become wearying... as much a journey around Geert Mak's head as it is a journey around Europe

—— Guardian

Fascinating

—— David V Barrett , Independent

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