Mussolini: A Biography - Hardcover

Ridley, Jasper

 
9780312193034: Mussolini: A Biography
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0312193033 ISBN 13: 9780312193034
Verlag: St. Martin's Press, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

This biography of Benito Mussolini describes his upbringing in the violent society of nineteenth-century Italy and the revolutionary traditions of Italian Socialism; his suspension from school for attacking other boys with knives; his imprisonment in Switzerland as an anarchist tramp. He had numerous love affairs and became a brilliant orator and journalist. He founded the Fascist party and ordered his squads to burn down the party offices of the Communists and Socialists during four years of virtual civil war. Mussolini, having become Prime Minister and dictator after the March on Rome, showed his true colors as an empire builder and, eventually, as a racist and persecutor of the Jews.

Hardly the buffoon he is frequently made out to be, Mussolini can also be viewed as an able politician who won the esteem of many statesman and who knew how to cooperate peacefully with foreign governments when it suited him.

Jasper Ridley has written a gripping account of the life of a many regarded as one of the arch villains of the twentieth century.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jasper Ridley was educated at the Sorbonne and Oxford University. After a successful career as a barrister he has turned to specializing in writing historical biography. He has published books on John Knox, Mary Tudor, Thomas Cranmer, Lord Palmerston (which won the most prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prize), Garibaldi, Napoleon III, and Tito. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a vice president for life of the English Section of International PEN.

Rezensionen

Ridley has written numerous biographies (e.g., Maximilian and Juarez, LJ 11/1/92), with Mussolini inspiring his latest but probably not his best work. The well-known tale of the poor Italian with the impressive speaking style and boisterous swagger who rose above his station in life to govern Italy during the tempestuous 1920s and 1930s is told rather ploddingly. Although uninspired, Ridley is evenhanded in his portrayal of Il Duce as the Italian strongman who made the trains run on time and his enemies disappear in the middle of the night. Mussolini was a master politician who invented Italian fascism and sought equal stature with Hitler but ended up butchered upside down at the end of a rope. Though told from a limited perspective, this book has great detail and remains the most comprehensive biography to appear in over a decade. For larger collections.AEdward Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Hitler once allegedly told Mussolini that he was "too kind to be any good as a dictator." The remark, suggests prolific biographer Ridley (Thomas Cranmer; Lord Palmerston; Garibaldi; Tito), was "banter between friends in which an apparent censure conceals a compliment." Yet the line also anticipates Ridley's own approach to the brazen, boastful demagogue who ruled Italy ruthlessly for 21 years with the help of thugs and thieves who did Il Duce's bidding. Although Mussolini's revived Roman empire is generally seen as a house of cards, the corrupt creation of a shrewd phrase-maker, Ridley is nonetheless cautiously admiring. His Duce is a good family man (despite his mistresses), a patriot (beneath the propaganda), an adroit politician (except in foreign affairs), even a humanitarian (who didn't deport arrested Jews to death camps). He portrays Mussolini as a pragmatist in peacetime, a bumbler in war. In his account of the years from 1923 to 1940, Ridley writes that Fascism "did not greatly interfere" with ordinary lives and "brought some real benefits to the people," but any such benefits were undermined by an opportunist choice of wartime allies. Perhaps losing interest, or failing in sympathy with the wartime Duce, Ridley passes over the embarrassing and disastrous Axis years in relatively few pages, closing with Mussolini's summary execution by partisans in the last days of the war. Somewhat casual with facts and lacking the sharp candor of Denis Mack Smith's still-standard life (1982), Ridley's Mussolini is not a page-turner. Sixteen-page photo insert.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The traditional view of Mussolini as an ego-driven, power-mad buffoon has recently been modified; a few of the more drastic revisionists portray Il Duce as a flawed but basically conventional, if authoritarian, politician. Ridley, a specialist in historical biography, stakes out middle ground. He shows how Mussolini, reared as a committed socialist with deep sympathy for the poor and powerless, gradually transformed his views and determined that national salvation must be found in the "corporate" state. Ridley acknowledges the "sincerity" of Mussolini's political beliefs. Yet, he is clearly appalled at his subject's cynicism, opportunism, and inability to separate his own ambitions from the welfare of his countrymen. In the end, this man of immense talent and grandiose dreams became what he claimed to despise: a petty, scheming politician. This is a well-written and balanced account of one of the more enigmatic figures of the twentieth century. Jay Freeman

This new biography will refine our portrait of a 20th-century dictator. It has been Mussolini's great historical fortune that he shared the stage with Hitler and Stalin. Overshadowed by the barbarism of his two contemporaries, Mussolini has reaped the benefit of appearing benign while Hitler and Stalin continue to battle for supreme title of the 20th century's worst dictator. Another historical anomaly was that Mussolini was initially praised by many Western leaders, most warmly by Winston Churchill and influential persons in the US. Ridley, a lawyer and author of more than 15 historical biographies, shares these opinions. Ridley correctly admonishes an earlier historiographical and political tradition that saw Mussolini as a mere buffoon, gesturing wildly during his many balcony speeches. No buffoon remains in power for two decades. This is a more nuanced portrait, showing Mussolini hesitant and undecided at times, willing to cooperate with other governments when it suited his designs. Of particular value is Ridley's description of Mussolini's early life and career, usually given short- shrift in other biographies of the dictator. A full third of the book is devoted to these early years, including information on his family, education, war experience, and eventual expulsion from the Italian Socialist Party for advocating intervention in the Great War. Mussolini was a complex and often contradictory man, as exemplified by his early political career as a revolutionary socialist. But Ridley is sometimes overly sympathetic with his subject: fascist violence is not depicted in its full savagery, while antifascists who attempted to assassinate the dictator are called ``terrorists'' (without the accompanying ironic quotes). Although the fascist Gabriel Garca Lorca regime cannot claim the number of victims destroyed by Stalin or Hitler, fascists were skilled in the political use of violence and terror, having the distinction of organizing the first death squads, the infamous Blackshirts or squadristi. The writing here is sometimes dry and particularly British. Still, though not without its flaws, this is a valuable introduction to Mussolini. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Verlag
St. Martin's Press
Erscheinungsdatum
1998
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0312193033
ISBN 13 
9780312193034
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
384
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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