Denis Mack Smith – författare

With Count Camillo Cavour's proclamation of a united Italian kingdom in 1861, the history of modern Italy began. But for this country, once at the centre of western culture and now promising to become a prosperous, liberal new European power, this late entry to nationhood and rapid reach for influence would bring frequent crises. In the decades following the Risorgimento, Italy lurched from liberal oligarchy to fascist dictatorship, through civil war to a new democratic regime still riddled with corruption and instability.First published in 1958 as 'Italy: A Modern History', Denis Mack Smith's classic work has been fully revised and updated, providing a new and penetrating analysis of the country's development from 1945 to the present. Stylish, clearly written, deeply informed, and often controversial, it remains the definitive account.Denis Mack Smith is a Fellow of the British Academy and of Wolfson College, Oxford, and a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He has been awarded a dozen literary prizes in Italy and is a Commendatore of the Italian Order of Merit.

Written by one of the world's leading historians of Italy, this provocative and highly readable book is the first major study of the Italian monarchy and its impact on Italy's history, from Unification in 1861 to the foundation of the Italian republic after the Second World War. "Brilliant, . . . remarkable, . . . highly entertaining. . . . Only Mack Smith could have told what is finally so shabby a story with this combination of learning and bravura."—Nicholas Richardson, Sunday Times  "A brilliant narrative history of the political role of the kings of Italy. It is based on an immense range of sources."—Philip Mansel, Daily Telegraph "Mack Smith is the leading writer in English on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian history. . . . [He] has now written a study of the Italian monarchy that subjects the four kings of united Italy to [. . . a] . . . debunking treatment. He shows how indispensable the monarchy was for the working of the Italian political system, but also how it was ultimately disastrous."—James Joll, New York Review of Books "A welcome addition to libraries in the English-speaking world. . . . Denis Mack Smith shows masterful command of political and diplomatic sources and balanced historical judgment."—Clara M. Lovett, American Historical Review "A book to be read and enjoyed. It is urbane [and] stylish."—Richard Bosworth, International History Review

Giuseppe Mazzini was one of the leading figures in the political history of nineteenth-century Europe. A vigorous proponent of nationalism, pre-eminent figure in the struggle for Italian independence and unity, and fascinating personality, his ideas were influential throughout Europe. Yet successive Italian governments, fearing the consequences of his belief in democracy and revolution, deliberately obscured his achievements: there have been few modern studies of Mazzini and no biography in English since 1902.Denis Mack Smith's major new account reexamines Mazzini's ideological impact and his place in the political and intellectual world of the mid-nineteenth century. Based on profound scholarship and immense archival research, the book recreates Mazzini's long years of poverty and exile in London and the networks of friends, associates, and enemies that brought him into contact with the greatest European figures of the age, among them Marx, Carlyle, Mill, and Bakunin. Mazzini is revealed as an acute but largely unrecognized prophet of the idea of a European community: he saw nationalism as a step toward larger and more harmonious confederations. Adept at inspiring admiration and animosity equally, Mazzini affronted the pope by his demand for religious reform, Karl Marx by his powerful critique of communism, and many of his less enlightened contemporaries for his campaigns on behalf of social security, universal suffrage, and women's rights. Yet he was universally venerated for his brilliance, humanity, and wisdom, and even his critics agreed that he left an enduring mark on his time.

First published in 1968, this standard text on Italian nineteenth-century history is reissued, with a new preface, in hardcover and paperback, to meet a continuing demand.

First published in 1968, this standard text on Italian nineteenth-century history is reissued, with a new preface, in hardcover and paperback, to meet a continuing demand.

First published in 1954, and now re-issued with a fresh preface, Cavour and Garibaldi remains the single most important contribution yet made by an English-speaking historian to the study of the Risorgimento. Devoted to seven crucial months in 1860, the work examines in detail the sequence of events between the Sicilian rebellion in April, and the absorption of all the south into the Italian kingdom of Victor Emmanuel in November. It shows, in the contrasting priorities of the two great leaders, the creative tensions that underlay the movement for Italian unification. Against Cavour's desire to extend to the rest of the peninsula the benefits of Piedmontese liberalism, the author juxtaposes Garibaldi's dream of a united Italy, achieved if necessary by force. The diplomat and political strategist is compared with the soldier and popular hero, and in the comparison it is Garibaldi who emerges as the realist, and Cavour as the inspired but dogmatic muddler.