Volume 54, Number 1 · January 11, 2007
In the Shadow of Berlusconi
By Paul Ginsborg
The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi
by Alexander Stille
Penguin, 384 pp., $25.95
The Italian national elections in April of this year produced the closest re-sult in the sixty-year history of the Italian Republic. In the elections for the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house, a mere 25,000 votes separated the two sides. In those for the Senate, the outcome depended on the vote of Italians resident abroad, who for the first time had six senatorial seats reserved specially for them. No one expected them to vote against Berlusconi. They did precisely that—with four seats going to the center-left coalition led by Romano Prodi, one to an independent candidate, and only one to Berlusconi's coalition of the center-right.
Review, 4644 words
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