"In Warriors for a Living, Idan Sherer examines the experience of the Spanish infantry during the formative period of the Italian Wars. Decades of clashes between Spain and France transformed Italy in
No other Auschwitz survivor has been as literarily powerful and influential as Primo Levi. But Levi was not only a victim or a witness. In the fall of 1943, at the very start of the Italian Resistance
The history of modern Italy is characterized by recurrent cultural and political projects of modernity, rejuvenation, and regeneration; projects which often had their roots in a widespread dissatisfac
This book depicts the cultural imagination of the Italian-Jewish minority from the unification of the country to the end of the First World War. The creation of an Italian nation-state introduced new
This book describes Mussolini’s little-known radical ideology, including his activities in Switzerland, relationship with revolutionary syndicalism, and radical journalism. It provides an in-depth tre
After being seized by the papal police in Rome in May 1749, Anna del Monte, a Jew, kept a diary detailing her captors’ efforts over the next thirteen days to force her conversion to Catholicism. Anna’
Through the lens of a history of material culture mediated by an object, Angelica's Book and the World of Reading in Late Renaissance Italy investigates aspects of women's lives, culture, ideas and th
This book offers a major contribution for understanding the spread of the humanist movement in Renaissance Florence. Investigating the connections between individuals who were part of the humanist movement, Maxson reconstructs the networks that bound them together. Overturning the problematic categorization of humanists as either professional or amateurs, a distinction based on economics and the production of original works in Latin, he offers a new way of understanding how the humanist movement could incorporate so many who were illiterate in Latin, but who nonetheless were responsible for an intellectual and cultural paradigm shift. The book demonstrates the massive appeal of the humanist movement across socio-economic and political groups, and argues that the movement became so successful and widespread because by the 1420s–30s the demands of common rituals began requiring humanist speeches. Over time, humanist learning became more valuable as social capital, which raised the status
Andrew Leach’s Rome is the first book in Polity’s exciting new ‘Cities in World History’ series, which aims to provide the general reader and traveller with historically informed companions to the wor
Andrew Leach’s Rome is the first book in Polity’s exciting new ‘Cities in World History’ series, which aims to provide the general reader and traveller with historically informed companions to the wor
Spanning the entire history of the city of Rome from Iron Age village to modern metropolis, this is the first book to take the long view of the Eternal City as an urban organism. Three thousand years old and counting, Rome has thrived almost from the start on self-reference, supplementing the everyday concerns of urban management and planning by projecting its own past onto the city of the moment. This is a study of the urban processes by which Rome's people and leaders, both as custodians of its illustrious past and as agents of its expansive power, have shaped and conditioned its urban fabric by manipulating geography and organizing space; planning infrastructure; designing and presiding over mythmaking, ritual, and stagecraft; controlling resident and transient populations; and exploiting Rome's standing as a seat of global power and a religious capital.
Ruler of Florence for seven bloody years, 1531 to 1537, Alessandro de' Medici was arguably the first person of color to serve as a head of state in the Western world. Born out of wedlock to a dark-ski
This book, accompanying a major 2016 exhibition at the British Museum, offers a broad survey of the island's geography and its rich mythological and historical past, while focusing on Sicily’s two mos
The year is 1932. In Rome, the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini unveils a giant obelisk of white marble, bearing the Latin inscription MUSSOLINI DVX. Invisible to the cheering crowds, a metal box lies
Since World War II, Italy has struggled to recast both its colonial past and its alliance with Nazi Germany. For many years, pervading much intellectual and public discourse was the contention that, p
