Customer Reviews

The Italian Guillotine: Operation Clean Hands and the Overthrow of Italy's First Republic

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Il volume di Burnett e Mantovani contribuisce a chiarire il pericoloso processo di supplenza del potere democraticamente legittimato, quello parlamentare, da parte del potere giudiziario. Dietro allo sconto fra magistrati e politici, emerge il più ampio e inquietante processo di trasformazione dell'Italia in Stato etico, che taluni hanno semplificato, non senza acume, in un ritardato scontro fra modello calvinista e modello cattolico. Insieme ad altri libri editi in questi anni, tra i quali è doveroso citare l'opera di Ciro Sbailò (anch'egli, come Luca Mantovani, uomo comunicazione di Forza Italia), Davanti alla Legge, pubblicato in Italia nel 1997, The Italian Guillotine ha un solo limite, grave: non essere ancora stato tradotto in italiano. Fatto strano apparentemente, ma che la lettura stessa del volume rivelerà come inevitabile, in un Paese dove la magistratura difende le proprie illegalità colpendo, anche economicamente, chi le denuncia.

An excellent book to understand many important events in recent Italian history. A good antidote against many oversimplifications and false commonplaces about Italian politics and society. THe book is more journalistic than scholarly, and sometimes presents less evidence for its claims that it should. But the evidence exists elsewhere, so all the main arguments of the book are sound. It urgently deserves and Italian translation.

Burnett and Mantovani have written the only book that gets to the heart of the unprecedented judicial inquisition taking place in Italy today. Noone who wishes to understand contemporary Italian politics can do without it. Charles Loveridge, Cullen International.

This is a description of a major event in Italy, the causes of which were concealed and distorted in Italian medias at the time of the trials and afterwards. It is a new approach to one of the "Italian misteries"

Luca Mantovani is a public-relations-man of the Italian Party "Forza Italia", allied with the ex-fascist "Alleanza Nazionale". The Forza Italia's leader Silvio Berlusconi was very very close to the Socialist Party ex-leader Bettino Craxi, who was one of the most corrupted politician in Italy. It seems that Craxi gave many many favours to Berlusconi, who seems to have something to hide about these favours and his own past. It's true, it's possible that there was somebody behind the judges in the Operation "Clear Hands", maybe the ex-Communist Party "PDS". But the point is that I don't accept any judgement from Mantovani, extremely involved in this dramatic and confused situation, in which his own party is more interested to fight what they call "the judge party" and to save their leader, than to think about the real needs of Italian People.