Mussolini

ISBN: 0340809884

Author: Bosworth, R. J. B.

Condition: New

Review"Bosworth is an authority on 20th-century Italy, and his exhaustive study of Benito Mussolini, first published in London, leaves no stone unturned in trying to explain the complexities of Il Duce and his times. Bosworth includes copious footnotes and an impressive bibliography to authenticate his compelling interpretation of Italy's fascist dictator. This portrait of Mussolini reveals the author's appreciation of the complex ingredients of Il Duce's legacy, a legacy that still influences Italian politics. Mussolini was a "man of image" whose virile charisma unified a fractious nation, but the ideological underpinnings of fascism never sank very deeply into Italian society. Although his 22-year dictatorial reign brought misery to millions, Mussolini never bought into the racist fanaticism of his Nazi brethren. As Bosworth infers, Mussolini's inherent zest for life kept him from becoming the grim exterminator Hitler wanted him to be. Bosworth's biography easily supersedes Denis Mack Smith's 1982 Mussolini as the definitive study of the Italian dictator and belongs in every public and academic library with a strong European history collection."-Library Journal"Recently there has been a disturbing resurgence of interest in Mussolini and his political movement within Italy. Some of this can be attributed to the benign curiosity of a younger generation lacking any personal memory of the fascist era. However, revisionist TV documentaries and "scholarly" surveys of the period that combine nostalgia with willful glossing over of the outrages conducted by Il Duce are quite distressing. Bosworth, a professor of history at the University of Western Australia, has written extensively about Italian fascism, and fortunately this is not a revisionist tome. While Bosworth does not demonize Mussolini, he views him as an extreme example of an ego-driven personality incapable of divorcing his own self-gratifying impulses from the best interests of his people. However, the author also convincingly asserts that, as a political force, Mussolini was not an aberration; he and his movement grew out of and were linked to a supposedly "respectable" ultranational and intolerant strain in the Italian body politic, and that strain is still flourishing. A well-balanced examination."-Booklist "Impressively researched, splendidly written, sound in judgement, rich in insight and humane in spirit - in every respect a superb study of Mussolini and his Fascist regime.' -Ian Kershaw, Historian, author"Challenges most of the recent interpretations of the Italian leader ... [He demolishes the image of the Duce strutting across the European stage in charge of his own destiny. Charisma, a lust for power, and boundless ambition carried Mussolini far from his origins in Dovia and Predappio but left him in the end a physical wreck at the mercy of forces he could not control and men with wills that were much stronger than his own. Italy, as they say, was collateral damage" -Alexander De Grand, North Carolina State UniversityProduct DescriptionBosworth's Mussolini allows us to come closer than ever before to an understanding of the life and actions of the dictator and of the political world and society within which he operated. This biography paints a picture of brutality and failure in governance with insight into Mussolini as a human being shaped by the particular patterns of Italian society which were so vastly different from Axis partners Germany and Japan.Mussolini was a brutal tyrant who added untold numbers to the dead of war torn Europe but we cannot understand his regime by equating it with Hitler or Stalin. His life began modestly in the provinces and he maintained a traditional family life for a man of his time including both a wife and mistresses. He sought in his way to be an intellectual but was capable of cruelty and was a racist with the consistency and vigor which would have made him a good recruit for the SS. He sought an empire but, for the