This wide-ranging volume offers a broad analysis of how competing ideologies within modern Italy ‘formulated multiple and often antagonistic visions of modernity’ (p. 2), with the authors arguing that the Italian case can offer an entry point for anyone interested in theorising on the nature of modernity.

The book is divided into ten chapters, beginning with Italian Unification and ending in 2016. Chapters 2–5 focus on the four ‘-isms’ that dominated Italian political and social life between 1861 and 1943 – namely Liberalism, Catholicism, Socialism, and Fascism – and demonstrate how each one ‘can be viewed as different articulations of a shared attempt to outline a particular Italian “road to modernity”’ (pp. 14–15). The remaining chapters focus on the ‘liminal period’ of 1943–1945; post-war Italy of the late 1940s/1950s; social change in Italy from the 1960s to the 1980s; and Italy in the post-Cold War era, from the 1990s to today.

The introduction provides a strong start and offers a useful and thoughtful engagement with Italy’s relationship to modernity. As the authors point out, this is traditionally construed as Italy being a ‘latecomer’ to modernity in Europe (p. 3). However, as they rightly highlight, how we conceptualise Italian modernity is inextricably linked with our definitions of Europe. While Italy’s path may have diverged from those of the Great Powers of Western Europe, it is not so out of step if one considers Italy’s position within a Mediterranean frame of reference that would include narratives of Balkan countries and modern Turkey (pp. 4–5).

There are two major themes running throughout the volume. The first is the ‘role of memory politics in the formulation of alternative modernities’ (p. 2), specifically the way in which the memory of the Risorgimento was employed by very different political actors over more than 100 years to serve divergent political aims. The authors argue that ‘foundational moments and the events tied to such moments return to the surface of political life and public discourse during crisis periods’ (p. 210). Thus, the reader is offered consideration of Liberal Italy’s use of Risorgimento heroes culminating in the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of Unification in 1911, and analysis of Fascism’s dual exploitation of the myths of the ancient Roman past and the more recent Risorgimento. In Chapter 6, the reappropriation of the Risorgimento by anti-Fascists during the Resistance is addressed. The account of the 1961 centenary celebrations of Italian Unification in Chapter 8 provides an interesting counterpoint to the 1911 festivities described in Chapter 2, and highlights the way in which the myth of the Risorgimento lost its appeal both because Italy was experiencing a period of relative stability, and thus was in less need of such memory politics, and also because of the country’s difficult relationship with nationalism after the ventennio (p. 210). This analysis is nicely concluded in Chapter 9 by a consideration of the return to the memory of the Risorgimento by successive Italian presidents Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and Giorgio Napolitano at the turn of the last century, who sought to celebrate Italian national unity through acknowledgement of regional diversity and of competing histories (p. 253). A second major theme is the trajectory of these competing modernities, primarily between a Socialist/Communist view on the one hand and a Catholic (later Democrazia Cristiana) view on the other, which is unpicked in Chapters 3, 4, and 7. Chapter 7, which draws on many other previously published works by the authors, is particularly strong in outlining how these different strands developed, frequently in direct relation to one another and with a view to dominating the other.

A strong, and very timely, element of the book is provided in its penultimate chapter, in which the authors consider how Italian politics can be regarded as having ‘paved the way’ for future political developments elsewhere in Europe and beyond (pp. 258–264). Two of the many examples they cite are how the technocratic governments in Italy of the 1990s could be seen as forerunners of those in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Greece in the 2010s; and how personality politics, so utterly ubiquitous today, had its earliest exponent in the figure of Silvio Berlusconi. Given that the book was published in 2016, the name of Donald Trump is not mentioned, although he could easily be included in their analysis here.

The book’s strength in tracing historical narratives over time is also, however, one of its weaknesses. Its temporal scope is perhaps too ambitious, making it understandable why the content is primarily based on secondary sources (all rigorously acknowledged in the notes). Thus, specialists will find very little new material within the pages of the book, which can be frustrating at times. Chapter 4 on Fascism, for example, feels often like a mere amalgamation of existing scholarship by Roger Griffin, Emilio Gentile, and Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi. The authors themselves, however, point out in the introduction that the ‘primary aim of the book is not to present new empirical materials but rather to reconceptualise twentieth-century Italian history’ (p. 14), by placing it within a theoretical framework of competing modernities. I am not, however, entirely convinced that the authors have succeeded fully in achieving this objective.

Another somewhat problematic aspect of the book is the very large number of typographical errors therein (e.g. p. 55, p. 143, p. 211, p. 219 etc.), as well as some issues with fluid expression in English. It is to be hoped that these issues could be rectified by either the publisher or the authors in any subsequent edition. These issues notwithstanding, the book constitutes a valuable addition to modern Italian political history, and, given the breadth of its coverage, has particular potential to be used as a set text for undergraduate courses on Italian politics and political thinking.