Academic studies of fascism have tended, in the past, to concentrate on its leadership or ideology. Only recently have scholars sought to look at the lives of ordinary people and analyse what happened to the grandiose slogans when they were translated into the currency of everyday living. Three years ago, Richard Bosworth, an Australian historian, wrote what is perhaps the best biography of Mussolini in English. But he was challenged by one reviewer on whether biography could ever adequately explain the terrible events of inter-war Europe. "Mussolini's Italy" is his response: an attempt to outline the impact of fascism upon Italian society. It is a powerful work of scholarship, beautifully written, which should be read by anyone interested in 20th-century Europe, or indeed the antecedents of modern-day Italy.
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