Cycling was a sport so important in Italy that it marked a generation, sparked fears of civil war, changed the way Italian was spoken, led to legal reform and even prompted the Pope himself to praise a cyclist, by name, from his balcony in St Peters in Rome. It was a sport so popular that it created the geography of Italy in the minds of her citizens, and some have said that it was cycling, not political change, that united Italy.Pedalare, Pedalare! is the first complete h...

*A TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR*'A compelling and sobering read' JOHN DICKIE, author of Mafia Republic'Taut and gripping' TELEGRAPH, BEST BOOKS OF 2025'Grimly absorbing' FINANCIAL TIMESThe explosive story of the terrorist group who brought Italy to a standstill in the 1970s.In March 1978, the Red Brigades kidnapped for...

'An enjoyable, highly readable history that manages to bring murky, often fiendishly complex events into the light' Sunday TimesItaly emerged from the Second World War in ruins. Divided, invaded and economically broken, it was a nation that some people claimed had ceased to exist. And yet, as rural society disappeared almost overnight, by the 1960s, it could boast the fastest-growing economy in the world.In The Archipelago, historian John ...

'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 2006 World Cup final between Italy and France was a down-and-dirty game, marred by French superstar Zidane's head-butting of Italian defender Materazzi. But viewers were also exposed to the poetry, force, and excellence of the Italian game; as operatic as Verdi and as cunning as Machiavelli, it seemed to open a window into the Italian soul. John Foot's epic history shows what makes Italian soccer so unique. Mixing serious analysis and comic storytelling, Foot describes its humble origi...

Franco Basaglia (1924-1980) was an Italian psychiatrist and activist who proposed the dismantling of psychiatric hospitals and pioneered new ideas about mental health and its treatment. Basaglia was also one of the principal proponents of Italy's Law 180, which effectively closed down large mental hospitals in Italy. His ideas and his disciples have had a decisive influence in the move away from institutional care in many parts of the world, particularly in continental Europe and South Ame...

This book brings together a group of British and Italian scholars who have made significant contributions to the historiography of modern Italy over the last three decades, dedicated to the influence of Paul Ginsborg. Reflecting Ginsborg's interest in the encounter of social and political history in modern Italy, contributions explore the varied forms taken by activism in civil society. Rather than just treating activism and engagement as limited, circumscribed phenomena within a political...

When the wind of the 1960s blew through the world of psychiatryIn 1961, when Franco Basaglia arrived outside the grim walls of the Gorizia asylum, on the Italian border with Yugoslavia, it was a place of horror, a Bedlam for the mentally sick and excluded, redolent of Basaglia’s own wartime experience inside a fascist gaol. Patients were frequently restrained for long periods, and therapy was largely a matter of electric and insulin shocks. The corridors stank, and...

Transmissions of Memory: Echoes, Traumas and Nostalgia in Post-World War II Italian Culture discusses cultural products—films, poetry, fiction, architectural buildings, autobiographical writing, and social media—to individuate through them the dynamics of memory. The field of analysis is Italian culture from World War II to the contemporary times, and the volume has in a gendered approach one of its focuses, offering an encompassing view on cultural memory and highlighting the similarities...

Bloomsbury presents The Red Brigades by John Foot, read by Mark Meadows.'A compelling and sobering read' JOHN DICKIE'Deeply researched and powerfully written' ROSS KINGThe explosive story of the terrorist group who brought Italy to a standstill in the 1970s.In March 1978, the Red Brigades kidnapped former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, murdering his bodyguards. Fo...

Bloomsbury presents Blood and Power by John Foot, read by Daniel Philpott.'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 politici...

The intimate biography of the charismatic Tour de France winner Marco Pantani, now u****pdated to include the 2014 and 2015 investigation into Pantani's death.National Sporting Club Book of the YearShortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award'An exhaustively detailed and beautiful book . . . a fitting, ambivalent tribute - to the man, and to the dark heart of the sport he loved' Independent