Mussolini: A Biography [Paperback]

Jasper Ridley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2000

Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) was the founder of Fascism and iron-fisted ruler of Italy for two decades. He was also an extremely able politician who won the esteem of many statesmen—including Winston Churchill and influential persons in the United States. This biography describes Mussolini's childhood; his education (including his suspension from school for attacking other boys with knives); his World War I experiences and severe wounding; his involvement in, and eventual expulsion from the revolutionary Italian Socialist Party; his numerous love affairs, his early career as a journalist and his rise to power and brutal rule.

Editorial Reviews

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Cooper Square Press; 1st Cooper Square Press ed edition (September 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815410816
• ISBN-13: 978-0815410812
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,657,566 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Amusing and fun but slightly Deficient, April 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Mussolini: A Biography (Hardcover)

If you want to satisfy a transient curiosity about the life of Mussolini, this book may actually do that, however if you are serious about pursuing the fact and truth of the man and the period you will probably find this book a little disappointing.

It is sketchy in most of its parts, especially as it covers the bits and pieces of the early life of Mussolini as a journalist. It lacks the depth of insight into many of the incidents and characters encountered. At points the author seems to be reciting dates and events, rather than analyzing and researching them.

Many names and historical facts are mentioned briefly, without elaborating even a little to educate readers who are not particularly professional historians. Arguments are sometimes weak and lack a convincing evidence, judgments are sometimes very subjective.

Still the book is amusing and hard to leave once you started reading from it, it will be a good book to travel with, but may not be satisfactory for serious historians and biography fans.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Second Rate, January 22, 2003

By 

Derek Leaberry (Queenstown, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mussolini: A Biography (Paperback)

Jasper Ridley offers the reader a facile biography of the Italian dictator. Though Benito Mussolini's youth and early adulthood as a radical intellectual are adequately explained, the analysis of Mussolini's rise is shallow. An internationalist socialist until just before World War One, he becomes an Italian nationalist with almost little explanation of why he changed other than his serving briefly as a draftee in the pre-1914 Italian Army. Surely, there is more to explain Mussolini's turnabout. The analysis of post-war Italy and it's ungovernability and social breakdown is weak. Was Italian democractic tradition inch-deep, ready to be exploited by an authoritarian? The Fascist economic system is barely mentioned. Mussolini's thoughts on Hitler's big gamble of sending troops to the demilitarized Rhineland in 1935 are not explained. How did Mussolini come to be the weaker of the two European right-wing authoritarians and did he acknowledge that Hitler dominated the political alliance between the two men? Why did the Italian army have problems defeating the primitive Ethiopian army in 1935-36? Or why did the small, woefully armed Greek army defeat the Italian army and chase it across the Albanian frontier? Why was Italy not ready for World War Two? This biography lacks analysis. More muscle is needed to fill out the man who was Benito Mussolini.

3.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes superficial, June 4, 2010

By 

Enjolras (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: MUSSOLINI: A Biography (Paperback)

This biography of Mussolini sometimes seems like a high school report - it covers just the facts and events of Mussolini's life, with little analysis or depth. There's no insight into the man - for example, why he flip-flopped so dramatically from socialism to fascism. Also, I would have liked more depth and context on Italian politics, Ethiopia, etc. Not bad for somebody who wants a quick read, but there are better biographies out there.