Customer Reviews

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

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I hope this is not the future of democracy becasue I find it scary to contemplate. A well written, hard-to-put down book that is not difficult to follow. I found the last chapter particularly interesting as it pertains to US politics.

Younger American readers who do not remember a less politicized media atmosphere may well wonder what the fuss is all about: Fox is the norm to them, and to many, the print media is a bastion of the left. If anything, the book reminds us that there is a difference between fact and opinion. A very timely read and, for those of us who love Italy, a very upsetting view of what politics in Italy has become.

The only fault I found with the book is some repetition from chapter to chapter with respect to examples/quotes, although this may be because the chapters could have been printed separately in various publications. Still a worthwhile read.

I recived the book from Amazon just a short while ago. I started it and could hardly put it down. What an incredible job Stille has done!
To make order and organize all the material, on this endless italian tragedy, must have been an Herculean task. The story is told with clarity and riveting
prose, with richness of facts and documentation and from a perspective that is historical and not detached, caring and profoundly analytical. This book is of great relevance not only for Italian readers but for Americans as well.
I agree with the author through the whole book and admire his work.
I thank him for it.

Silvio Berlusconi is Italy's richest man - the owner of its largest television and publishing empire, department stores, a national soccer team, and an insurance and financial services company. In the early 1990's he joined them together into a political machine to elect both a number of candidates to Parliament and himself to Prime Minister. Advertising executives contacted the companies that bought ads on his channels, his employee stockbrokers and insurance agents set to turning clients into supporters, the personnel department of his TV advertising company selected over 100 of its top salesmen to be candidates for parliament (they were also required to buy a special kit explaining his new party's program, as well as lessons on how to speak in public and on TV), and his TV media experts conducted focus groups to hone Berlusconi's message.

Another important act was starting thousands of "Go, Italy" clubs (the favorite chant of his soccer team fans) to "promote values of freedom and democracy.

Prior to initiating his political run Berlusconi had been a night-club singer in college, and then a real-estate developer. Bribes and shady deals (eg. promise that a development would only reach five stories in height, then hire the enforcement officer and immediately build out to eight; commission a biased environment report from supposedly disinterested parties; use a double-dealing attorney to take advantage of an absent young and distraught inheritor by
convincing her that low-ball amounts were appropriate and using a stock-swindle as payment; using political connections to reroute noisy airline landing paths from his holdings). In addition, his main aide was a strong and long-time Mafia connection.

Berlusconi's campaign was deliberately vague - simply promising work, freedom, individualism, generosity, and prosperity (borrowing from both opposing parties). His focus was not on programs, but personality - thus, his "self-made" life story was emphasized. His TV programs (and campaign) were both aimed at the lesser educated. Berlusconi parroted Reagan's "Morning in America" theme, while railing at his enemies ("Communists, using Nazi propaganda techniques" - repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth), while doing so himself with preposterous point (eg. his "enemies" enjoy a media monopoly and use it against him - Stille offer documentation that this was not true; there was no conflict between his public and private roles; the many criminal investigations of him turned up nothing). Another Berlusconi tenet was to make up quotations and attribute them to renowned authorities in an effort to convince people.

One of Berlusconi's first acts after being elected was to replace the boards and heads of the rival government TV networks - so much for avoiding conflict of interest! Investigations into him were thwarted by dirty tricks, including planted evidence against his prosecutors.

In 2004, Berlusconi's run as P.M. ended after a close election (he claimed fraud, in spite of being in charge of it). Economic growth under his administration was poor, though he did save his media and financial empires from negative legislation and derailed his criminal prosecution.

The "bad news" is that Stille sees parallels between Italy and Thailand (its president is also the countries richest man and a large media owner), Russia (Putin has gained control over virtually all of Russia's TV), and the U.S. (Bush II doing away with restrictions on media concentration and paying for media coverage, the aggressive, partisan style of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, et al. Hopefully not.

My only complaint is that often the material becomes too detailed - especially for an American reader not familiar with Italy.

Stille has put together a thought provoking book. Presaged by Orwell, the SB story defines the age we are living in, and those of us who care about democracy need to understand it.

To achieve his vast wealth, SB and his associates broke and skirted many laws. By selling himself through his monopolistic media empire (and the image of his new party named for his popular soccer team) in three months time, he achieved prosecutorial immunity by taking over the reins of government.

As Prime Minister, with most of Parliament on his personal payroll, SB effected the release all imprisoned for corruption. Ousted as PM, still powerful, SB got a law enabling witness to opt out of testifying. Back again as PM, a law whereby those accused can chose their prosecutors! This is no where near the tip of the iceberg!

Stille gives us a step by step of this rise and how he used the power he got to avoid prosecution for ever growing lists of crimes. He used the media to polarize the country and create crises. He cast his enemies as scum who hated him for his virtue & would destroy the country if given any power. By controlling the media he was able to discredit everyone who criticized the least thing about him. Each different media outlet (which he controlled, although he made them seem independent) echoed his point of view and made his distortions the conventional wisdom. Books, journals, and higher brow newpapers (permanance and nuance) being the province of the small group who knew about and could document his abuses of power, he discredited it as elitist. The many who spent 3-5 hours a day watching and glimpsing TV integrated the reality he fed them and believed his stories to be facts. He saw to it that the few journalists who might divulge his crimes would never work again. Pay offs of money, influence and/or career opportunities worked too and controlling the judiciary took care of everything else. Stille documents all these with specifics.

I'd like to know more about the brave Italian prosecutors who press on despite the dangers of the Mafia and Berlusconi.

While there is analysis throughout, Stille ties the story up with comparisons to the highly concentrated media developing in the US and its desire for federal approvals for further concentration. One parallel he doesn't bring out here is that of the two comedians who break the chorus praise for SB. Hopefully, the 100+ cable channels, a vibrant internet, the size and nature of our country (the US), and the economics of our entertainment exports will protect us in the US from this sort of monarchy.

This is an excellent book. It's a slow read for those not familiar with Italian politics, but very worthwhile.

The metaphor is so important that I hope that some cable channel can give us a Dallas or West Wing style series based in it. Hear me HBO! This is as big as the Sopranos! Call it "Rome II".

Unlike several other well-known Berlusconi tomes, Stille's book is unusually balanced. Like the other books however, he is forced to rehash much biographical material and if you have read other Berlusconi bios this can deaden the pace at times. In my opinion, what makes this book interesting and lip-quavering at points, is its explanation of Berlusconi as a peculiarly Italian phenomenon. Without the context of provincialism, anti-competitiveness, and the endemic corruption of the political establishment, Berlusconi simply could not have flourished. Whether one approves or disapproves of Berlusconi's political forays, surrounded by cadres drawn often from his own business interests, the reality as Stilles shows is that Berlusconi emerged at the right time and in the right place (Milan). What is shocking (leaving aside revelations of Mafia interests, blatant disregard of national broadcasting codes, planning laws and so forth) is Stille's underlying, subterranean, thesis that Italy is constitutionally tuned to corruption and moral laxity in high places. There is no point in retelling the many of the wonderfully unnerving vignettes about Berlusconi's intrigues that are often cited as an affront to liberal democracy in the book, suffice it to say that without a horde of supporting characters, the Berlusconi phenomenon could never have flourished. Reflect on that for a moment to appreciate the real service done by this book.

This book gives a shocking view of the ugly underbelly of Italian politics. I'm glad I pushed through it, though I was quite tempted to give up a number of times. The book is like the dumping of truckloads of dirt: what is at first scandalous and intriguing does, at times, become the dull and mechanical listing of the details of another five incidents of corruption. It's like reading a catalog of the circus that is Italian politics from 1990 to 2006, alternating between shocking and tedious. One cannot avoid noting the irony that, like its subject, the book verges on the chaotic and could benefit from self-restraint.

As other reviewers have observed, the book is repetitive, and appears not to have been edited to put the chapters -- perhaps free-standing articles -- together. One just wants to send this back to the talented author for a rewrite. Perhaps someone did but, having gorged and been disgusted by the excess of it all, Stille could not bear it chew it over further.

Its often said that the most insightful works into a nation or a regime are authored by foreigners; first because foreigners can look at something objectively, and second because they can discuss topics that natives are too afraid of bringing up due to potential repercussions. This is a perfect example of this saying. Written by an Italian-American, this book examines the professional and political life of Silvio Berlusconi, Italian businessman, politician and con man. Published before his step down from power in 2011, this book still does a good job examining his methods, his skills, his rise to power first in real estate, than in the media business, and finally in Italian national politics. Along the way, the book looks at his dealings with the Mafia, various political parties from the Left to the Right, business partners and rivals, and his manipulations of the Italian people. Peppered throughout are quotes by the man himself, on topics such as money, voter sympathies, and women, specifically his conquest of women. Overall, this is a great book; aptly titled and full of wonderful insights and dialogue.

Alexander Stille distinguished himself, as a hard hitting journalist, in his revealing, gruesomely titled book, "Excellent Cadavers," about the Mafia in Sicily leading to the corruption the Italian government and the arrest of Guilio Andreotti. His heroes are the martyred prosecutors; Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, assassinated by the mob. Italian justice being what it is Andreotti never went to jail. Stille now targets Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister in the late nineties and then for a longer stretch after 2000 and a far worthier subject when it comes institutional corruption. Berlusconi at the time of this review, may well succeed Romano Prodi, whose government just fell. The horror continues in the cesspool called Italian politics.

Stille's main driving focus is on Berlusconi's wealth accumulation, drive to power, mob contacts, undermining of the press, the political formation of Forza Italia, and his short first administration; regrettably, this riveting story becomes vague and repetitious on the press theme in describing the second Berlusconi imperium. But by this time, one gets the gist; mud, money, mob, slime, cover up, just more of it for a longer period of time.

For about fifteen pages near the end, Stille extrapolates all that is wrong with Berlusconi's governance to the world wide concentration of media control in the hands of "the vast right wing conspiracy" and his own policy differences with the Bush Administration. His rant becomes a Tourette's Syndrome diatribe manifestly based on an European slim knowledge of American politics, too much reading of Paul Krugman and the New York Times editorials, and a daily gorging of CNN from overseas. It forces the reader - if only for a moment to think; maybe Silvio is not that bad. But then the urge passes and one gives Stille the benefit of the doubt and one fondly recalls Tuscan wine, Venetian vistas and Florentine masterpieces.

It's funny how the "Left" will go to any lengths to bury the "right". It seems to me that the author should have spent a little more time talking to the "average Italian", than bashing Mr. Berlusconi from afar. The longest serving Italian leader since the end of World War II is systemically bashed in this supposed attempt at a "balanced" analysis. It's typical hogwash. My father is from Italy, many of his friends still live there...Berlusconi came back after an unholy alliance of Communists, Socialists, and other malcontents continued to bicker over more and more entitlement-type policies, which simply don't work. And the Italian electorate spoke out, and voted him back in. Perhaps the Liberals should get a clue, no?

Stay away...unless you like "historical fiction", in lieu of contradictory facts.