This book explains Italy s endless political instability and its historical, cultural and economic roots. It also illustrates why, even after the creation of the Italian state, Italy was never really unified. Piero Gobetti described fascism once as the "autobiography" of the Italian nation. This book explains why today it is possible to describe "berlusconism" - a cultural, political and social phenomenon in Italy- as the most recent version of this country s autobiography.

"Graziano adopts an interdisciplinary approach and opens various windows on the political, economic, sociological, and cultural history of Italy since its unification. He weaves a thick and rich cloth on which he also presents various shiny pearls in the form insights, images, and references. It is a rich and erudite book that makes an important contribution to the recent debate on 'the absence of an Italian nation' - a debate on which Grazian builds but which he also carries forward." - Forum Italicum

"Manlio Graziano's ambitious The Failure of Italian Nationhood seeks to get to the heart of the problem, examining crisis after crisis in the past century and a half in search of some recurrent behavior pattern that might explain Italy's troubles." - The New Yorker

"[One of] the two most serious attempts to grapple with Italy's first 150 years." - The Economist

"Silvio Berlusconi's Italy is heir to a long and convoluted history. Manlio Graziano navigates nimbly through this labyrinth and suggests why the country has again fallen easy victim to weak government and feeble institutions." - David Willey, BBC Rome Correspondent

"This is a rich and erudite book. It makes an important and interdisciplinary contribution to the debate on 'the absence of an Italian nation' on which it builds and carries forward. Manlio Graziano has managed to weave a thick and rich cloth on which he has also set various shiny pearls." - Osvaldo Croci, Professor,Department of Political Science, Memorial University, Canada

"A very informative and enlightening study about a country often discussed, rarely understood." - Sergio Romano, historian, columnist, and author of Vademecum di storia dell'Italia unita

"Manlio Graziano lucidly diagnoses the problem of Italian national identity as both anomalous and inextricably rooted in its European context. His fluent and richly informed book has important implications for our broader understanding of nationhood in a globalized world." - Francis X. Rocca, Vatican Correspondent, Religion News Service

"Here you learn how a failed State may last at least 150 years." - Lucio Caracciolo, Editor of Limes: Italian Review of Geopolitics and Heartland: Eurasian Review of Geopolitics

Autorentext
Manlio Graziano teaches Geopolitics of Religions at Paris IV La Sorbonne, France. His previously published books include Identité catholique et identité italienne and Il secolo cattolico.

Inhalt
How Premature Development Became a Factor of Backwardness The Phantom Nation The Northern Question Inventing Ancestors The Unhappy Consciousness of Italian Development A Culture without a Nation The Difficult Italianization of the Piedmont The Difficult Piedmontization of Italy The Moderate Social Bloc Transformism Internationalization Crises and Transformism Emerging Sectors and Transformism The Southern Question A Counter-Reformist Identity A Civil 'Guelph' Religion The Quest for a Civil Italian Religion A Petit-Bourgeois Fatherland A Country of Limited Sovereignty Identity and Development The Failure of 'Democratic Nationalization' Italian Metamorphoses Between Europe and the Mediterranean The Internationalization Crisis of the 1990s