On 10 July 1943, British soldiers landed in south-eastern Sicily as part of a major Allied invasion. As they fought their way northwards through the Italian peninsula, they frequently encountered local populations, imposing a forced cohabitation that would have a lasting impact on both soldiers and civilians. For a long time, attention has focused predominantly on those who perceived their arrival as a liberation, marginalizing the daily realities of the Allied occupation of Italy. At the ...

From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Monuments Men: "An astonishing account of a little-known American effort to save Italy's…art during World War II." —Tom BrokawWhen Hitler’s armies occupied Italy in 1943, they also seized control of mankind’s greatest cultural treasures. As they had done throughout Europe, the Nazis could now plunder the masterpieces of the Renaissance, the treasures of the Vatican, and the antiquities of the...

In a chilling history, renowned historian James Holland deftly relates Italy's dark forgotten yearsDuring the Second World War, the campaign in Italy was the most destructive fought in Europe - a long, bitter and highly attritional conflict that raged up the country's mountainous leg. For frontline troops, casualty rates at Cassino and along the notorious Gothic Line were as high as they had been on the Western Front in the First World War. There were further simila...

'A remarkably moving document that, like the best of the elemental war stories, eventually becomes a statement about the unplanned nature and folly of war'_The New York Times At the height of the Second World War, Italy was being torn apart by German armies, civil war, and the eventual Allied invasion. In a corner of Tuscany, one woman - born in England, married to an Italian - kept a record of daily life in a country at war. Iris Origo's compellingly powerful diary, War in Val d'Orcia, is...

In 1943, while the world was convulsed by war, a few visionaries -- in the private sector and in the military -- committed to protect Europe's cultural heritage from the indiscriminate ravages of World War II.In the midst of the conflict, the Allied Forces appointed the monuments officers—a motley group of art historians, curators, architects, and artists—to ensure that the great masterworks of European art and architecture were not looted or bombed into oblivion. T...

'A wonderfully assured and utterly riveting biography that captures not only the much-maligned Machiavelli, but also the spirit of his time and place. A monumental achievement.' – Jessie Childs, author of God's Traitors.‘A notorious fiend’, ‘generally odious’, ‘he seems hideous, and so he is.’Thanks to the invidious reputation of his most famous work, The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli exerts a unique hold over the popular imagination. But wa...

'Clear, cool, plainly written and devastating' Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Times Literary SupplementA major history of the rise and fall of Italian fascism: a dark tale of violence, ideals and a country at war.In the aftermath of the First World War, the seeds of fascism were sown in Italy. While the country reeled in shock, a new movement emerged from the chaos: one that preached hatred for politicians and love for the fatherland; one that promised to bu...

The brutal and tragic story of the First World War’s oft-overlooked Italian Front.**“A fascinating, indeed brilliant, portrait of a society immolated by its own delusions.” —**New York Review of BooksNamed a Book of the Year by Economist • Sunday Times • Sunday Telegraph • Obs...

Award-winning author Keith Lowe's newest critical deep-dive into the history of Naples during WWII.Keith Lowe has chronicled the end of WWII in Europe in his award-winning book Savage Continent and the war’s aftermath in the sequel, The Fear and the Freedom. In Naples 1944, he brings readers another masterful chronicle of the terrible and often unexpected consequences of war. Even before the fall of Mussolini, Naples was a place of great ...

The dramatic story of Mussolini's fall from power in July 1943, illuminating both the causes and the consequences of this momentous event. Morgan shows how Italians of all classes coped with the extraordinary pressures of wartime living, both on the military and home fronts, and how their experience of the country at war eventually distanced them from the dictator and his fascist regime. Looking beyond Mussolini's initial fall from power, Morgan examines how the Italian people responded to...

The acclaimed author of A Train in Winter and Village of Secrets delivers the next chapter in "The Resistance Quartet": the astonishing story of the aristocratic Italian family who stood up to Mussolini's fascism, and whose efforts helped define the path of Italy in the years between the World Wars-a profile in courage that remains relevant today.Members of the cosmopolitan, cultural aristocracy of Florence at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Rosselli f...

An examination of the life, military experiences and key battlefield exploits of Giuseppe Garibaldi.Born on 4 July 1807 in the city of Nice, the turning point in his life occurred in April 1833 when he met Giovanni Battista Cuneo, a member of the secret movement known as 'Young Italy'. Joining this society, Garibaldi took an oath dedicating his life to the struggle for the liberation of his homeland from Austrian dominance.The subsequent years would see him...