Mussolini: A New Life

Farrell, Nicholas

ISBN 10: 1842121235 / ISBN 13: 9781842121238

Published by Phoenix, 2005

Your purchase helps support Sri Lankan Children's Charity 'The Rainbow Centre'. Ex-library, so some stamps and wear, but in good overall condition. Our donations to The Rainbow Centre have helped provide an education and a safe haven to hundreds of children who live in appalling conditions. Seller Inventory # Z1-B-029-02211

Synopsis:

Drawing on freshly discovered material--including correspondence previously unavailable outside academia--the talented writer and journalist Nicholas Farrell has created a revelatory biography of the Italian fascist leader and dictator. How did Mussolini manage to take power and hold on to it for two decades? What inspired Churchill to call him "the Roman genius" and Pope Pius XI to say he was "sent by Providence"? And how did Mussolini successfully curtail democracy without using mass murder to stay in command? Farrell answers these questions and more, focusing particularly on Mussolini's fatal error: his alliance with Hitler, whom he despised. Anyone interested in history, politics, and World War II will encounter an intriguing and startling picture of one of the 20th century's key figures.

Reviews: A former journalist for the Daily Telegraph brings new light to Mussolini's political contributions and his embattled conscience in this absorbing and fresh biography of the man who created, and then lost control of, the Fascist movement. Farrell follows his subject's numerous underlings and mistresses to piece together a portrait untainted by the maniacal persona Mussolini has inherited from history. This balanced perspective opens the door for an updated look at European Fascism and Anti-Semitism, one that will be useful to understanding the bloody chess game Europe's foreign ministers and military commanders played during the two World Wars. Farrell seems committed to exonerating Il Duce from complicity with Hitler's crimes, going so far as to argue that, while "the French had been only too willing to round up the Jews," Mussolini and his officers went out of their way to save the Jewish people in their territories. Still, Farrell's greatest feat is his iconoclastic analysis of Fascism's socialist origins and its contemporary rivalry with democracy as it tried to plot a "Third Way" between capitalism and communism. Soberly countenancing the moral relativity of power in the modern epoch, Farrell recounts Mussolini's life with precision and detail. Though long and complex, this new reading of Italy's most infamous leader and his place in history's most violent chapter is an original and important work.
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Bibliographic Details

Title: Mussolini: A New Life
Publisher: Phoenix
Publication Date: 2005
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Good