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Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Dictatorship, 1915-1945 by: Richard Bosworth List Price: £10.99 City Travel Guides Price: £7.69 You Save: £3.30 (30%)Prices subject to change. |
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Binding: Paperback EAN: 9780141012919 ISBN: 0141012919 Label: Penguin Books Ltd Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd Number Of Pages: 720 Publication Date: September 28, 2006 Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd Studio: Penguin Books Ltd Sales Rank: 10404 Related Items:
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 Rating: - Superb (though slightly tedious at times)As a chronicle of Fascist Italy, this book is very good. An impressive blend of political, economic, and military history which displays Fascist Italy effectively and thoroughly. The only problem is that the author tends to go into great detail about countless different characters (many of whom had no direct involvement in the drive of the regime) and thus it sometimes feels like one is reading a dictionary of Fascist supporters rather than a cohesive history of the period. Nonetheless, the book has been very well researched and is a gem for all who have an interest in the Duce and his era. Rating:  - A masterly insight into the dark side of ItalyThe stark horrors on the Nazi regime in Germany ensure that it is this country that is most associated with the cold, cruel and calculated tyranny of fascism. In the popular imagination there seem to be two branches of European fascism. The black shirted, jack booted, goose stepping National Socialism of a militaristic, Prussian dominated German Reich, and the bungling buffoonery of a seemingly more benign Mediterranean fascism. Mussolini personifies the latter, Il Duce inspecting wooden planes that will never fly, strutting military posturing that ends in defeat and an ignominious end at the hands of partisans. The passage of time has ensured that Italy has never been tainted with quite the same brush as Germany, and never had ... Read More: Rating:  - Flawed MasterworkThis book contains a wealth of research and countless histories of figures in the Fascist movement from which the author invites us in his preface to 'draw a general picture from their impressionist detail'. This makes for a difficult and often boring task for the general reader as you wish the author had spent more time digesting the information to provide succinct analyses and conclusions of his own. The writing style is often idiosyncratic and in the context of pre-war Italy references to 'jihad' and 'Silvio Berlusconi' only serve to jar the reader. Words such as 'Fascistization', speechifying', 'camelized' and 'chuffed' do not lend an elegance to the construction. A verbose and detailed book in which the narrative drive is often lost. |
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