Modern Italian History

Focusing on modern Italian history from the Age of the Enlightenment to the present, this reference work serves as a bibliographical supplement to Coppa's "Dictionary of Modern Italian History". Entries include a select number of works in the arts, social sciences, and the humanities.

A new edition of the classic historical text on Italy

A History of Modern Italy addresses the question of how Italy's modern history, from its prolonged process of nation-building in the nineteenth century to the crises of the last two decades, has produced a paradoxical blend of hyper-modernity and traditionalism and thus made the country"different" in the broader context of Western Europe.The text explores how Italians have experienced seismic shifts in their social and economic landscape over the past two centuries, while simultaneously maintaining older cultural norms, social practices, and political methods. As a second objective, the book showcases a narrative of modern Italythat incorporates and blends the research findings and methodological insights of the new quantitative and cultural historical scholarship of the past two and a half decades. In doing so, it chronicles the regime changes that have taken the country from a Liberal monarchy through the Fascistdictatorship to a Democratic Republic while also delving into the simultaneous economic and social history of the nation through these periods.

Early Modern Italy is a fascinating survey of society in Italy from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries - the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Covering the whole of the Peninsula from the Venetian Republic, to Florence, through to Naples it shows how the huge economic, cultural and social divides of the period still affect the stability of present day united Italy. This is an essential guide to one of the most vibrant yet tempestuous periods of Italian history.

This classic textbook covers the social, economic and political history of Italy from unification in 1870 to the present time. This new edition brings students right up to date, with increased coverage of the the 1980's and 90's and a new section on the turbulent reign of Silvio Berlusconi. Other changes include updating the coverage of Liberal Italy and Fascism in the light of recent scholarship and changes in historiographical approach, additional material on Italian popular culture and a new chronology.

The renewed attention to the origin and shape of nationalist discourses has promoted many excellent studies devoted to examining the rich storehouse of cultural responses produced during and after Risorgimento, the political events that, from 1859 to 1870, led Italy from being a fragmented peninsual to an independent and unified nation-state. However, the assessment of Risorgimento and its myths from the post-World War II era to the present remains, for the most part, unexplored. While it is undeniable that the dramatic economic, social, and political transformations that have characterized Italy from the second half of the twentieth century to the present have altered the role and function of nationalist narratives, it remains equally true that interest in the Risorgimento in modern Italian culture has not diminished.

An invaluable guide for those needing to understand modern Italian history, this volume portrays three key periods. The first addresses Liberal Italy. The second is the fascist period, and finally the author examines Italy's history from the post-World War II occupation to the end of the 'First' Republic.