From Publishers Weekly
Hitler once allegedly told Mussolini that he was "too kind to be any good as a dictator." The remark, suggests prolific biographer Ridley (Thomas Cranmer; Lord Palmerston; Garibaldi; Tito), was "banter between friends in which an apparent censure conceals a compliment." Yet the line also anticipates Ridley's own approach to the brazen, boastful demagogue who ruled Italy ruthlessly for 21 years with the help of thugs and thieves who did Il Duce's bidding. Although Mussolini's revived Roman empire is generally seen as a house of cards, the corrupt creation of a shrewd phrase-maker, Ridley is nonetheless cautiously admiring. His Duce is a good family man (despite his mistresses), a patriot (beneath the propaganda), an adroit politician (except in foreign affairs), even a humanitarian (who didn't deport arrested Jews to death camps). He portrays Mussolini as a pragmatist in peacetime, a bumbler in war. In his account of the years from 1923 to 1940, Ridley writes that Fascism "did not greatly interfere" with ordinary lives and "brought some real benefits to the people," but any such benefits were undermined by an opportunist choice of wartime allies. Perhaps losing interest, or failing in sympathy with the wartime Duce, Ridley passes over the embarrassing and disastrous Axis years in relatively few pages, closing with Mussolini's summary execution by partisans in the last days of the war. Somewhat casual with facts and lacking the sharp candor of Denis Mack Smith's still-standard life (1982), Ridley's Mussolini is not a page-turner. Sixteen-page photo insert.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Ridley has written numerous biographies (e.g., Maximilian and Juarez, LJ 11/1/92), with Mussolini inspiring his latest but probably not his best work. The well-known tale of the poor Italian with the impressive speaking style and boisterous swagger who rose above his station in life to govern Italy during the tempestuous 1920s and 1930s is told rather ploddingly. Although uninspired, Ridley is evenhanded in his portrayal of Il Duce as the Italian strongman who made the trains run on time and his enemies disappear in the middle of the night. Mussolini was a master politician who invented Italian fascism and sought equal stature with Hitler but ended up butchered upside down at the end of a rope. Though told from a limited perspective, this book has great detail and remains the most comprehensive biography to appear in over a decade. For larger collections.AEdward Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
