Edens of Italy


Book Description




Mussolini's Children


Book Description

Mussolini's Children uses the lens of state-mandated youth culture to analyze the evolution of official racism in Fascist Italy. Between 1922 and 1940, educational institutions designed to mold the minds and bodies of Italy's children between the ages of five and eleven undertook a mission to rejuvenate the Italian race and create a second Roman Empire. This project depended on the twin beliefs that the Italian population did indeed constitute a distinct race and that certain aspects of its moral and physical makeup could be influenced during childhood. Eden K. McLean assembles evidence from state policies, elementary textbooks, pedagogical journals, and other educational materials to illustrate the contours of a Fascist racial ideology as it evolved over eighteen years. Her work explains how the most infamous period of Fascist racism, which began in the summer of 1938 with the publication of the "Manifesto of Race," played a critical part in a more general and long-term Fascist racial program.




Eden


Book Description

Anthony Eden, who served as both Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, was one of the central political figures of the twentieth century. He had good looks, charm, a Military Cross from the Great War, an Oxford first and a secure parliamentary constituency from his mid-twenties. He was Foreign Secretary at the age of 38, and the first British statesman to meet Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. Eden's dramatic resignation from Neville Chamberlain's Cabinet in 1938, outlined here in the fullest detail yet, made an international impact. This ground-breaking book examines his controversial life and tells the inside story of the Munich crisis (1938), the Geneva Conference (1954), Eden's battles with Churchill over the modernisation of the post-war Conservative Party and his rivalry with Butler and Macmillan in the early 1950s, culminating in a fascinating analysis of the Suez crisis.




Invented Edens


Book Description

Tracing the design of “techno-cities” that blend the technological and the pastoral. Industrialization created cities of Dickensian squalor that were crowded, smoky, dirty, and disease-ridden. By the beginning of the twentieth century, urban visionaries were looking for ways to improve both living and working conditions in industrial cities. In Invented Edens, Robert Kargon and Arthur Molella trace the arc of one form of urban design, which they term the techno-city: a planned city developed in conjunction with large industrial or technological enterprises, blending the technological and the pastoral, the mill town and the garden city. Techno-cities of the twentieth century range from factory towns in Mussolini's Italy to the Disney creation of Celebration, Florida. Kargon and Molella show that the techno-city represents an experiment in integrating modern technology into the world of ideal life. Techno-cities mirror society's understanding of current technologies, and at the same time seek to regain the lost virtues of the edenic pre-industrial village. The idea of the techno-city transcended ideologies, crossed national borders, and spanned the entire twentieth century. Kargon and Molella map the concept through a series of exemplars. These include Norris, Tennessee, home to the Tennessee Valley Authority; Torviscosa, Italy, built by Italy's Fascist government to accommodate synthetic textile manufacturing (and featured in an early short by Michelangelo Antonioni); Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela, planned by a team from MIT and Harvard; and, finally, Disney's Celebration—perhaps the ultimate techno-city, a fantasy city reflecting an era in which virtual experiences are rapidly replacing actual ones.




Eden


Book Description

Anthony Eden was long Churchill’s heir but only succeeded him in 1955. His period in office saw the end of Britain’s tenure as a first-rank power in its own right.




Ill-Made Alliance


Book Description

In 1939, faced with the German invasion of Czechoslovakia and a growing Italian threat in the Balkans, Turkey and Britain (and later France) signed an alliance in which Turkey linked itself politically and militarily with Britain and France in exchange for financial assistance for its rearmament program. Despite the agreement, however, when the war came to the Mediterranean, Turkey did not become involved. Presenting a new interpretation of why the alliance failed, Brock Millman explores Anglo-Turkish relations leading up to the alliance of 1939, taking into account the broader economic, military, and strategic issues. While previous accounts suggest that Turkey entered into the alliance reluctantly, Millman contends that it not only wanted an alliance but sought as close a relationship as Britain would concede in the prewar years. He attributes the failure of the alliance mainly to Britain's lack of support, namely its inability to fit Turkey into its strategy in the Mediterranean, its failure to produce a coherent operational plan that could encompass Turkish military co-operation, and its unwillingness to provide Turkey with timely and much-needed financial, material, and industrial assistance. Divided into three parts, The Ill-Made Alliance examines the roots and course of the Anglo-Turkish rapprochement in the years 1934-38; the economic, military, and politic factors in 1938-39 that inhibited development of the emerging alliance to the point where it might have been fully functional; and the collapse of the alliance in 1939-40.




Anthony Eden


Book Description

Eden's name became inextricably linked to Suez, and Rothwell provides an important reassessment of Eden's role in this pivotal crisis. He gives overdue attention to the wider Middle East situation, and explains Eden's failure to manage the Anglo-American relationship in the crisis in terms of his life-long lack of warmth for the United States, which verged at times on anti-Americanism. Eden remains a central figure in twentieth century international politics, and all those interested in international history as well students of international relations, will find Rothwell's new political biography compelling reading.




Churchill and Eden


Book Description

This historical study sheds new light on the partnership and rivalry between two of the UK’s most significant political leaders from WWII to the Cold War. For more than two decades, Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden worked closely together. As Churchill’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, Eden took over leadership of the nation when Churchill resigned from office. But while one is revered as a great leader and national icon, the other is remembered as the architect of Britain's worst foreign policy failure. Churchill and Eden tells the story of the relationship between two men who led Britain through war and peace. The narrative ranges from the sunny south of France to the deserts of Africa and the jungles of Vietnam, covering the eras of the Second World War, the decline of Britain's Empire and the coming of the Cold War. Historian David Charlwood offers a new perspective on the lives and decision-making of two of the most well-known political figures of the Twentieth Century.







The Eden-Eisenhower Correspondence, 1955-1957


Book Description

The personal correspondence between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Prime Minister Anthony Eden during the time they were simultaneously in office tells the dramatic story of a relationship that began with great promise but ended in division and estrangement. Many of the letters have only recently been declassified, making it possible for the first time to publish this unique historic collection in its entirety. Peter G. Boyle's introduction, annotations, and conclusion provide context for the letters--details about the personalities and careers of Eden and Eisenhower and major issues that influenced the Anglo-American relationship up to 1955, such as relations with the Soviet Union, nuclear concerns, colonialism, the Middle and Far East, economic issues, and intelligence matters. The letters themselves offer an intimate look into the special connection between Britain and the United States through the often eloquent words of their leaders. They offer particular insight into the Suez Crisis of 1956, when Eden's and Eisenhower's views greatly diverged over the use of force to resolve the situation. Their personal relationship cooled from that point on and ended with Eden's resignation in January 1957.




Recent Books