Volume 23, Number 13 · August 5, 1976
The Great Pretender
By A.J.P. Taylor
Mussolini's Roman Empire
by Denis Mack Smith
Viking, 322 pp., $12.95
Benito Mussolini was the last of the romantic revolutionaries, a man born after his time and gone sour. In the nineteenth century he might have been one of Garibaldi's Red Shirts. More likely he would have been at home with Bakunin, hatching ineffective conspiracies with nonexistent conspirators. As it was, Mussolini's conspiracy succeeded. To his own misfortune and that of Italy, he found himself at the head of a great state. After twenty years of bombast, he brought Italy and himself to ruin.
Review, 2127 words
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