Italy: A Short History

Italy: A Short History is a concise but comprehensive account of Italian history from the Ice Age to the present day. It is intended for both students of Italian history and culture and the general reader, whether tourist, business-person or traveller, with an interest in Italian affairs. Harry Hearder places the main political developments in Italian history in their economic and social context, and shows how these related to the great moments of artistic and cultural endeavour. Amongst key events, he analyses the growth and decline of the Roman Empire, the remarkable cultural achievements of the Renaissance, Italian unification and the contradictions of the fascist dictatorship of Mussolini. Jonathan Morris brings the work up to the present day with an authoritative but colourful history of the corruption scandals that brought down the post-war Italian political system in the 1990s and the new political forces that have emerged in its place.

Table of Contents:
1. Italy in the classical world; 2. The early Middle Ages; 3. The high Middle Ages; 4. The Renaissance; 5. The political and cultural eclipse of Italy; 6. The Risorgimento, 1790–1861; 7. From Unification to Fascism, 1861–1922; 8. The Fascist disaster, 1922–45; 9. Italy since the Second World War, 1945–2000.

About the Author :
The late Harry Hearder, who died in 1996, was a Professor at the University of Wales. His many publications on European and Italian history include Europe in the Nineteenth Century (Longman, second edition, 1988) and Italy in the Age of the Risorgimento (Longman, 1983). Jonathan Morris is Lecturer in Modern European History at University College, London. His publications include The Political Economy of Shopkeeping in Milan 1886-1922 (Cambridge, 1983). He is editor of the Journal of Contemporary European History.

Review :
'There is a fine introduction to the culture of the Renaissance and an equally positive account of the Risorgimento on which Hearder was such an expert ... another well produced and illustrated book.' Robert Pearce, History Today '... there are few English historians of Italy who write with the same ease and clarity as Hearder. Equally, there are few who would be able to manage the trick, as Hearder does, of condensing 3,000 years of history into one slim volume while still providing the reader with a detailed narrative of events and personalities, and a sense of historical perspective. it is for these reasons that Italy: A Short History deserves a second outing.' History