Description
Book SynopsisChristopher Duggan is Professor of Italian History at Reading University. He has written several books on modern Italian history, including
History of Sicily, with M. I. Finley and D. Mack Smith,
Fascism and the Mafia,
A concise history of Italy and
Francesco Crispi: From Nation to Nationalism. His most recent book is
The Force of Destiny: a History of Italy Since 1796.
Trade ReviewA fascinating exploration of the letters that ‘ordinary’ Italians who supported fascism wrote to Mussolini in the 1920s and 1930s * Glasgow Sunday Herald *
This original, revealing and disturbing book provides a grassroots view of fascist Italy * Independent *
Duggan’s superbly researched book uncovers the nasty reality of [Mussolini’s] regime and demonstrates that there was a disturbing symbiotic relationship between fascism and the Catholic Church * Mail on Sunday *
In his magnificent new book, a pathbreaking study that everyone interested in Fascism, or in Italy past and present, should read, Christopher Duggan fills the gap by examining a wide range of diaries… This enables Duggan to deliver not merely a detailed account of popular attitudes towards the regime, but, far more, a general history of Fascism that for the first time treats it, not as a tyranny that allowed ordinary Italians no possibility of expressing themselves freely, nor as the brutal dictatorship of a capitalist class that reduced the great majority of the country’s citizens to the status of victims, but as a regime rooted strongly in popular aspirations and desires. -- Richard J. Evans * London Review of Books *
Magnificent...a pathbreaking study that everyone interested in fascism, or in Italy past and present, should read * London Review of Books *
