THE SHORTEST HISTORY OF ITALY

The Shortest History of Italy sends you to the past to unlock the secrets of Italy.

From Michelangelo to Mussolini, Nero to Meloni, Galileo to Garibaldi, here is the sparkling story of the world’s most influential peninsula.

The calendar, the university, the piano; the Vespa, the pistol and the pizzeria… It’s easy to assume that inventions like these could only come from somewhere sure of its place in the world. Yet these pages reveal a land rife with uncertainty even as its influence spread.

From the rise of the Roman Republic to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, from the glories of Renaissance Florence to the long struggle for unification, from Europe’s first operas to the world’s first ghettos, Ross King nimbly charts the checkered course of Italian history. In the last hundred years, film, fashion and Fiat – once bigger than Volkswagen – emerge from the horrors of fascism and world war. This book is a majestic sweep across three millennia of history that not only shaped Europe but the wider world.

The Shortest History of Italy - Ross King - 9781913083953