David I. Kertzer – författare

Filled with discoveries, this is the dramatic story of Pope Pius XII's struggle to respond to the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Nazi domination of Europe.The Pope at War is the third in a trilogy of books about the papacy's response to the rise of Fascism and Nazism. It tells the dramatic story of Pope Pius XII's struggle to respond to the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the ongoing Nazi attempts to exterminate the Jews of Europe. It is the first book dealing with the war to make extensive use of the newly opened Vatican archives for the war years. It is based, as well, on thousands of documents from the Italian, German, French, British, and American archives. Among the many new discoveries brought to light is the discovery that within weeks of becoming pope in 1939, Pius XII entered into secret negotiations with Hitler through Hitler's emissary, a Nazi Prince who was married to the daughter of the King of Italy and who was very close to Hitler. The negotiations were kept so secret that not even the German ambassador to the Holy See was informed of them. The book also offers new insight into the thinking behind Pius XII's decision to maintain good relations with the German government during the war, including keeping the Germans happy while they occupied Rome in 1943-1944. And throughout, David I. Kertzer shows the active role of the Italian Church hierarchy in promoting the Axis war while the pope, who as bishop of Rome was responsible for the Italian hierarchy, offered his silent blessings and cast his public speeches in such a way that both sides could claim support for their cause.

This is the compelling story of Pope Pius XI''s secret relations with Benito Mussolini. A ground-breaking work, based on seven years of research in the Vatican and Fascist archives by US National Book Award-finalist David Kertzer, it will forever change our understanding of the Vatican''s role in the rise of Fascism in Europe.Both Pope Pius XI and Mussolini came to power in Rome in 1922. One was scholarly and devout, the other a violent bully. Yet they also had traits in common. Both had explosive tempers. Both bristled at the charge of being the patsy of the other. Both demanded unquestioned obedience from their subordinates, whose knees literally quaked in fear of provoking their wrath. Both came to be disillusioned by the other, yet dreaded what would happen if their alliance were to end.The book unravels for the first time the key role played between pope and dictator by the shadowy Jesuit go-between, dubbed Mussolini''s Rasputin. It also reveals the details of the secret agreement worked out by Mussolini with the pope''s personal envoy, offering Vatican support for Italy''s notorious, anti-Semitic ''racial laws''. And dramatic new light is shed on the controversial figure of Eugenio Pacelli, who (as Pope Pius XII) would later come to be idolized by some and reviled by others forhis silence during the Holocaust. In his role as Vatican Secretary of State, Pacelli had to struggle to keep the pope''s explosive temper from leading to a break with both Mussolini and Nazi Germany, as the Italian dictator increasingly embraced the German Fuehrer, whom Pius detested.With the recent opening of the Vatican archives covering Pius XI''s papacy, the full story of the two men''s relationship can now be told for the first time. It is an account that destroys the widely accepted myth of a heroic Church doing battle with the Fascist regime. On the contrary, as David Kertzer shows, Mussolini would not have been able to impose his dictatorship on Italy without the pope''s support. In exchange, the pope expected Mussolini to use his repressive reach to enforce Catholicmorality - and return the Church to a position of power in Italy.

This is the compelling story of Pope Pius XI''s secret relations with Benito Mussolini. A ground-breaking work, based on seven years of research in the Vatican and Fascist archives by US National Book Award-finalist David Kertzer, it will forever change our understanding of the Vatican''s role in the rise of Fascism in Europe.Both Pope Pius XI and Mussolini came to power in Rome in 1922. One was scholarly and devout, the other a violent bully. Yet they also had traits in common. Both had explosive tempers. Both bristled at the charge of being the patsy of the other. Both demanded unquestioned obedience from their subordinates, whose knees literally quaked in fear of provoking their wrath. Both came to be disillusioned by the other, yet dreaded what would happen if their alliance were to end.The book unravels for the first time the key role played between pope and dictator by the shadowy Jesuit go-between, dubbed Mussolini''s Rasputin. It also reveals the details of the secret agreement worked out by Mussolini with the pope''s personal envoy, offering Vatican support for Italy''s notorious, anti-Semitic ''racial laws''. And dramatic new light is shed on the controversial figure of Eugenio Pacelli, who (as Pope Pius XII) would later come to be idolized by some and reviled by others forhis silence during the Holocaust. In his role as Vatican Secretary of State, Pacelli had to struggle to keep the pope''s explosive temper from leading to a break with both Mussolini and Nazi Germany, as the Italian dictator increasingly embraced the German Fuehrer, whom Pius detested.With the recent opening of the Vatican archives covering Pius XI''s papacy, the full story of the two men''s relationship can now be told for the first time. It is an account that destroys the widely accepted myth of a heroic Church doing battle with the Fascist regime. On the contrary, as David Kertzer shows, Mussolini would not have been able to impose his dictatorship on Italy without the pope''s support. In exchange, the pope expected Mussolini to use his repressive reach to enforce Catholicmorality - and return the Church to a position of power in Italy.

Days after the assassination of his prime minister in the middle of Rome in November 1848, Pope Pius IX found himself a virtual prisoner in his own palace. The wave of revolution that had swept through Europe now seemed poised to put an end to the popes'' thousand-year reign over the Papal States, if not indeed to the papacy itself. Disguising himself as a simple parish priest, Pius escaped through a back door. Climbing inside the Bavarian ambassador''s carriage, heembarked on a journey into a fateful exile.Only two years earlier Pius''s election had triggered a wave of optimism across Italy. After the repressive reign of the dour Pope Gregory XVI, Italians saw the youthful, benevolent new pope as the man who would at last bring the Papal States into modern times and help create a new, unified Italian nation. But Pius found himself caught between a desire to please his subjects and a fear—stoked by the cardinals—that heeding the people''s pleas would destroy the church. The resulting drama—with acolorful cast of characters, from Louis Napoleon and his rabble-rousing cousin Charles Bonaparte to Garibaldi, Tocqueville, and Metternich—was rife with treachery, tragedy, and international power politics.David Kertzer is one of the world''s foremost experts on the history of Italy and the Vatican, and has a rare ability to bring history vividly to life. With a combination of gripping, cinematic storytelling, and keen historical analysis rooted in an unprecedented richness of archival sources, The Pope Who Would Be King sheds fascinating new light on the end of rule by divine right in the west and the emergence of modern Europe.

Days after the assassination of his prime minister in the middle of Rome in November 1848, Pope Pius IX found himself a virtual prisoner in his own palace. The wave of revolution that had swept through Europe now seemed poised to put an end to the popes'' thousand-year reign over the Papal States, if not indeed to the papacy itself. Disguising himself as a simple parish priest, Pius escaped through a back door. Climbing inside the Bavarian ambassador''s carriage, heembarked on a journey into a fateful exile.Only two years earlier Pius''s election had triggered a wave of optimism across Italy. After the repressive reign of the dour Pope Gregory XVI, Italians saw the youthful, benevolent new pope as the man who would at last bring the Papal States into modern times and help create a new, unified Italian nation. But Pius found himself caught between a desire to please his subjects and a fear—stoked by the cardinals—that heeding the people''s pleas would destroy the church. The resulting drama—with acolorful cast of characters, from Louis Napoleon and his rabble-rousing cousin Charles Bonaparte to Garibaldi, Tocqueville, and Metternich—was rife with treachery, tragedy, and international power politics.David Kertzer is one of the world''s foremost experts on the history of Italy and the Vatican, and has a rare ability to bring history vividly to life. With a combination of gripping, cinematic storytelling, and keen historical analysis rooted in an unprecedented richness of archival sources, The Pope Who Would Be King sheds fascinating new light on the end of rule by divine right in the west and the emergence of modern Europe.

Days after the assassination of his prime minister in the middle of Rome in November 1848, Pope Pius IX found himself a virtual prisoner in his own palace. The wave of revolution that had swept through Europe now seemed poised to put an end to the popes' thousand-year reign over the Papal States, if not indeed to the papacy itself. Disguising himself as a simple parish priest, Pius escaped through a back door. Climbing inside the Bavarian ambassador's carriage, he embarked on a journey into a fateful exile.Only two years earlier Pius's election had triggered a wave of optimism across Italy. After the repressive reign of the dour Pope Gregory XVI, Italians saw the youthful, benevolent new pope as the man who would at last bring the Papal States into modern times and help create a new, unified Italian nation. But Pius found himself caught between a desire to please his subjects and a fear--stoked by the cardinals--that heeding the people's pleas would destroy the church. The resulting drama--with a colorful cast of characters, from Louis Napoleon and his rabble-rousing cousin Charles Bonaparte to Garibaldi, Tocqueville, and Metternich--was rife with treachery, tragedy, and international power politics.David Kertzer is one of the world's foremost experts on the history of Italy and the Vatican, and has a rare ability to bring history vividly to life. With a combination of gripping, cinematic storytelling, and keen historical analysis rooted in an unprecedented richness of archival sources, The Pope Who Would Be King sheds fascinating new light on the end of rule by divine right in the west and the emergence of modern Europe.

In its early years anthropology often used demographic research, but the two disciplines have recently grown to distrust each other's assumptions and methods. In order to show that they have much to offer each other, this book seeks to bridge the demography/anthropology divide. The book begins with an historical account of the relations between the fields, then examines the major issues and controversies in anthropological demography, including the demographic implications of differing family and kinship systems; the influence of new developments in cultural, gender and identity theory on population study; the limits of quantitative approaches in demographic study; and demographers' view of the limits of anthropological methods.

In its early years anthropology often used demographic research, but the two disciplines have recently grown to distrust each other's assumptions and methods. In order to show that they have much to offer each other, this book seeks to bridge the demography/anthropology divide. The book begins with an historical account of the relations between the fields, then examines the major issues and controversies in anthropological demography, including the demographic implications of differing family and kinship systems; the influence of new developments in cultural, gender and identity theory on population study; the limits of quantitative approaches in demographic study; and demographers' view of the limits of anthropological methods.

In the most comprehensive study of political ritual yet written, David I. Kertzer explains why ritual has been and will continue to be an essential part of political life. Weaving together examples from around the world and throughout history, Kertzer shows that the success of all political groups, whether conservative or revolutionary, is linked to their effective use of ritual.“The author delights the reader with numerous excursions into the political rites of the Aztecs, the contemporary Soviet Union, the French Revolution, colonial Africa, the Italian Communist Party, and a host of others, all richly and amusingly analyzed. . . . This is. . . political anthropology as it should be, directed at an interdisciplinary audience, and demonstrating to non-anthropologists the vital relevance of ethnographic comparison for political theory.”—Robert W. Hefner, American Anthropologist“A major work in comparative political culture, this book should be mandatory reading for all undergraduate and graduate students of politics.”—Choice“An important and compelling book, one that illuminates the role of ritual in human life, as well as the nature of politics. Written in a lucid and graceful style, it should appeal to the general reader as well as to anthropologists and political scientists.”—Charles E. Silberman, author of A Certain People and Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice.

How have family relations been regulated through the ages by state institutions and laws? What impact did the advent of Christianity have on marriage? Were parents in the past less emotionally attached to their children? What changes have taken place in legal attitudes and practices toward adultery and “homicides of honor”? How has the position of women in the household altered over the millennia?  In this book distinguished contributors offer historical and anthropological perspectives on the Western family, focusing on family life in Italy from the Roman Empire to the present. Using methods that range from symbolic to quantitative analysis, the authors discuss a wide variety of topics, including matchmaking, marriage, divorce, inheritance, patterns of household organization, child-rearing practices, cultural and legal meanings of death, sexual mores, celibacy (banned in ancient Rome), adoption, and property rights. Through its unique combination of chronological sweep and geographical focus, the book is able to shed new light on central questions of continuity, change, and causation in family history.

In the wake of the fall of the Berlin wall, and with the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe collapsing, Italian Communist Party (PCI) head Achille Occhetto shocked his party in 1989 by insisting that the PCI jettison its old name and become something new. This dramatic book tells of the ensuing struggle within the PCI, which at the time was Italy's second-largest party and the most powerful Communist party in the West. David I. Kertzer's vivid depiction of the conflict brings to life the tactics that party factions employed and the anguish of party members for whom Communism was the core of their identity. Kertzer also tells a larger story from an anthropologist's perspective: the story of the importance of symbols, myths, and rituals in modern politics.Those who seek dramatic political change, Kertzer contends, must remake history. He recounts how those who succeeded in transforming the PCI into the new Democratic Party of the Left effectively used ritual and manipulated political symbols. Bringing the views of Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, and other political thinkers into his discussion, Kertzer explores theoretical issues involving the relation between symbolism and political power, concluding that modern politics is fundamentally a struggle over symbols and the redefinition of history.

This second of three extraordinary volumes on the history of the family in Europe focuses on family life and the forces that shaped it from the French Revolution to the First World War. The political and economic forces that transformed Europe in these years had a tremendous impact on family life. The contributors to the book examine the changing life experiences of ordinary people from a variety of perspectives and provide new keys to understanding the nature of the emerging modern European family.How did industrialization, new technology, the growth of cities, and the revolution in transport and communication alter daily life? How did the family—the vital social unit that determined not only how and where people lived, but often where they worked—adapt to the demands of the new economy? The contributors explore these questions and more, illuminating the changes the nineteenth century brought about in the family and uncovering a fascinating diversity of family forms and family relations in different parts of Europe and distinguishing different social classes.

In this meticulously researched, unflinching, and reasoned study, National Book Award finalist David I. Kertzer presents shocking revelations about the role played by the Vatican in the development of modern anti-Semitism. Working in long-sealed Vatican archives, Kertzer unearths startling evidence to undermine the Church’s argument that it played no direct role in the spread of modern anti-Semitism. In doing so, he challenges the Vatican’s recent official statement on the subject, We Remember. Kertzer tells an unsettling story that has stirred up controversy around the world and sheds a much-needed light on the past.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Soon to be a major motion picture from Steven Spielberg. A National Book Award FinalistThe extraordinary story of how the vatican''s imprisonment of a six-year-old Jewish boy in 1858 helped to bring about the collapse of the popes'' worldly power in Italy.Bologna: nightfall, June 1858. A knock sounds at the door of the Jewish merchant Momolo Mortara. Two officers of the Inquisition bust inside and seize Mortara''s six-year-old son, Edgardo. As the boy is wrenched from his father''s arms, his mother collapses.  The reason for his abduction: the boy had been secretly "baptized" by a family servant.  According to papal law, the child is therefore a Catholic who can be taken from his family and delivered to a special monastery where his conversion will be completed.    With this terrifying scene, prize-winning historian David I. Kertzer begins the true story of how one boy''s kidnapping became a pivotal event in the collapse of the Vatican as a secular power.  The book evokes the anguish of a modest merchant''s family, the rhythms of daily life in a Jewish ghetto, and also explores, through the revolutionary campaigns of Mazzini and Garibaldi and such personages as Napoleon III, the emergence of Italy as a modern national state.  Moving and informative, the Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara reads as both a historical thriller and an authoritative analysis of how a single human tragedy changed the course of history.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Thanks to improved food, medicine, and living conditions, the average age of the population is increasing throughout the modern industrialized world. Yet, despite the recent upsurge of scholarly interest in the lives of older people and the blossoming of historical demography, little historical demographic attention has been paid to the lives of the elderly. A landmark volume, Aging in the Past marks the emergence of the historical demographic study of aging.Following a masterly explication of the new field by Peter Laslett, leading scholars in family history and historical demography offer new research results and fresh analyses that greatly increase our understanding of aging, historically and across cultures. Focusing primarily on post-Industrial Europe and the United States, they explore a range of issues under the broad topics of living arrangements, widowhood, and retirement and mortality. This important work provides a much-needed historical perspective on and suggests possible alternative solutions to the problems of the aged.Contributors: George Alter, Rudolf Andorka, Allen C. Goodman, Myron P. Gutmann, Michael R. Haines, E. A. Hammel, Tamara K. Hareven, Nancy Karweit, David I. Kertzer, Peter Laslett, Andrejs Plakans, Roger L. Ransom, Daniel Scott Smith, Richard Sutch, Peter Uhlenberg, Richard Wall, Charles WetherellThis title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.

Thanks to improved food, medicine, and living conditions, the average age of the population is increasing throughout the modern industrialized world. Yet, despite the recent upsurge of scholarly interest in the lives of older people and the blossoming of historical demography, little historical demographic attention has been paid to the lives of the elderly. A landmark volume, Aging in the Past marks the emergence of the historical demographic study of aging. Following a masterly explication of the new field by Peter Laslett, leading scholars in family history and historical demography offer new research results and fresh analyses that greatly increase our understanding of aging, historically and across cultures. Focusing primarily on post-Industrial Europe and the United States, they explore a range of issues under the broad topics of living arrangements, widowhood, and retirement and mortality. This important work provides a much-needed historical perspective on and suggests possible alternative solutions to the problems of the aged. Contributors: George Alter, Rudolf Andorka, Allen C. Goodman, Myron P. Gutmann, Michael R. Haines, E. A. Hammel, Tamara K. Hareven, Nancy Karweit, David I. Kertzer, Peter Laslett, Andrejs Plakans, Roger L. Ransom, Daniel Scott Smith, Richard Sutch, Peter Uhlenberg, Richard Wall, Charles WetherellThis title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.

Thanks to improved food, medicine, and living conditions, the average age of the population is increasing throughout the modern industrialized world. Yet, despite the recent upsurge of scholarly interest in the lives of older people and the blossoming of historical demography, little historical demographic attention has been paid to the lives of the elderly. A landmark volume, Aging in the Past marks the emergence of the historical demographic study of aging.Following a masterly explication of the new field by Peter Laslett, leading scholars in family history and historical demography offer new research results and fresh analyses that greatly increase our understanding of aging, historically and across cultures. Focusing primarily on post-Industrial Europe and the United States, they explore a range of issues under the broad topics of living arrangements, widowhood, and retirement and mortality. This important work provides a much-needed historical perspective on and suggests possible alternative solutions to the problems of the aged.Contributors: George Alter, Rudolf Andorka, Allen C. Goodman, Myron P. Gutmann, Michael R. Haines, E. A. Hammel, Tamara K. Hareven, Nancy Karweit, David I. Kertzer, Peter Laslett, Andrejs Plakans, Roger L. Ransom, Daniel Scott Smith, Richard Sutch, Peter Uhlenberg, Richard Wall, Charles WetherellThis title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.

The Politics of Race, Ethnicity and Language in National Censuses examines the ways that states have attempted to pigeon-hole the people within their boundaries into racial, ethnic, and language categories. These attempts, whether through American efforts to divide the US population into mutually exclusive racial categories, or through the Soviet system of inscribing nationality categories on internal passports, have important implications not only for people's own identities and life chances, but for national political and social processes as well. The book reviews the history of these categorizing efforts by the state, and offers a theoretical context for examining them, illustrating the case with studies from a range of countries.

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER From National Book Award finalist David I. Kertzer comes the gripping story of Pope Pius XI’s secret relations with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. This groundbreaking work, based on seven years of research in the Vatican and Fascist archives, including reports from Mussolini’s spies inside the highest levels of the Church, will forever change our understanding of the Vatican’s role in the rise of Fascism in Europe.   The Pope and Mussolini tells the story of two men who came to power in 1922, and together changed the course of twentieth-century history. In most respects, they could not have been more different. One was scholarly and devout, the other thuggish and profane. Yet Pius XI and “Il Duce” had many things in common. They shared a distrust of democracy and a visceral hatred of Communism. Both were prone to sudden fits of temper and were fiercely protective of the prerogatives of their office. (“We have many interests to protect,” the Pope declared, soon after Mussolini seized control of the government in 1922.) Each relied on the other to consolidate his power and achieve his political goals.   In a challenge to the conventional history of this period, in which a heroic Church does battle with the Fascist regime, Kertzer shows how Pius XI played a crucial role in making Mussolini’s dictatorship possible and keeping him in power. In exchange for Vatican support, Mussolini restored many of the privileges the Church had lost and gave in to the pope’s demands that the police enforce Catholic morality. Yet in the last years of his life—as the Italian dictator grew ever closer to Hitler—the pontiff’s faith in this treacherous bargain started to waver. With his health failing, he began to lash out at the Duce and threatened to denounce Mussolini’s anti-Semitic racial laws before it was too late. Horrified by the threat to the Church-Fascist alliance, the Vatican’s inner circle, including the future Pope Pius XII, struggled to restrain the headstrong pope from destroying a partnership that had served both the Church and the dictator for many years.   The Pope and Mussolini brims with memorable portraits of the men who helped enable the reign of Fascism in Italy: Father Pietro Tacchi Venturi, Pius’s personal emissary to the dictator, a wily anti-Semite known as Mussolini’s Rasputin; Victor Emmanuel III, the king of Italy, an object of widespread derision who lacked the stature—literally and figuratively—to stand up to the domineering Duce; and Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, whose political skills and ambition made him Mussolini’s most powerful ally inside the Vatican, and positioned him to succeed the pontiff as the controversial Pius XII, whose actions during World War II would be subject for debate for decades to come.   With the recent opening of the Vatican archives covering Pius XI’s papacy, the full story of the Pope’s complex relationship with his Fascist partner can finally be told. Vivid, dramatic, with surprises at every turn, The Pope and Mussolini is history writ large and with the lightning hand of truth.  NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE  “Kertzer has an eye for a story, an ear for the right word, and an instinct for human tragedy. This is a sophisticated blockbuster.”—Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Revolutionary Summer   “A fascinating and tragic story.”—The New Yorker“Revelatory . . . [a] detailed portrait.”—The New York Review of BooksFrom the Hardcover edition.

This volume studies age as a basis for social organization by uniting research from the social science disciplines while implementing both cross-cultural and historical perspectives. The contributors, a distinguished interdisciplinary group of scholars, advance our understanding of age structuring by relating the changing societal level processes and individual aging experiences, and examining retirement practices, age and power in society, and cultural conceptions of age.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Pope and Mussolini takes on a pivotal, untold story: the bloody revolution that stripped the pope of political power and signaled the birth of modern Europe. Days after the assassination of his prime minister in the middle of Rome in November 1848, Pope Pius IX found himself a virtual prisoner in his own palace. The wave of revolution that had swept through Europe now seemed poised to put an end to the popes’ thousand-year reign over the Papal States, if not indeed to the papacy itself. Disguising himself as a simple parish priest, Pius escaped through a back door. Climbing inside the Bavarian ambassador’s carriage, he embarked on a journey into a fateful exile. Only two years earlier Pius’s election had triggered a wave of optimism across Italy. After the repressive reign of the dour Pope Gregory XVI, Italians saw the youthful, benevolent new pope as the man who would at last bring the Papal States into modern times and help create a new, unified Italian nation. But Pius found himself caught between a desire to please his subjects and a fear—stoked by the cardinals—that heeding the people’s pleas would destroy the church. The resulting drama—with a colorful cast of characters, from Louis Napoleon and his rabble-rousing cousin Charles Bonaparte to Garibaldi, Tocqueville, and Metternich—was rife with treachery, tragedy, and international power politics. David Kertzer is one of the world’s foremost experts on the history of Italy and the Vatican and has a rare ability to bring history vividly to life. With a combination of gripping, cinematic storytelling and keen historical analysis, rooted in an unprecedented richness of archival sources, The Pope Who Would Be King sheds fascinating new light on the end of rule by divine right in the west and the emergence of modern Europe. Advance praise for The Pope Who Would Be King“The Pope Who Would Be King is a remarkable achievement—both a page-turner and a major contribution to scholarship accomplished with outstanding clarity and economy. Kertzer gives this story a remarkable degree of freshness, and brings out vividly the determination, passions, blood, and gore of this dramatic moment in European history.”—John Davis, editor, Journal of Modern Italian Studies “This lively, sympathetic yet critical account of the early years of the pontificate of Pope Pius IX is worthy of its distinguished author. There is nothing like it in any language.”—Rev. John W. O’Malley, S.J., author of The Jesuits