This book is the English translation of the Italian edition, which is based on Giulia Albanese's PhD thesis and was published in 2006. Except for the preface and the conclusion and some minor changes in the text, both editions have the same structure, consisting of six chapters. The book is an analysis of a central topic in Italian history: the Fascist seizure of power. The aim is to ‘reconstruct the violent nature of the March on Rome and to emphasise its significance in indicating a real break in the history of Italy and the beginning of the Fascist dictatorship’ (p. i). According to Albanese, the institutional and administrative continuity and the deals and compromises made with the liberal ruling class and the Crown have overshadowed the political turning point and the successive end of the liberal State.

The book therefore aims to show the violent and subversive nature of fascism and the dissipation of the sense of legality and the disintegration of the liberal institutions that began to become apparent in the spring of 1919. It examines fascist (and nationalist) attacks, describing the fascist strategy of violence that was adopted in order to conquer Italian cities and the countryside. Albanese focuses on the decision process which, starting on August 1922, led to the March on Rome. She analyses the insurrectional violence that was inflicted during the summer and autumn of 1922, the ambivalent behaviour of prefects and army soldiers and the first year of Mussolini's government, when the use of force as a legitimate tool for keeping power and consensus did not decrease at all. Based on this analysis, the author underlines not only that violence represented a key element of fascist action but also that fascism was successful as the result of an authoritarian culture that was deeply rooted in the ruling class mentality and in the moderate public opinion of the country, as demonstrated by the narrow-minded measures to which the liberal State often resorted.

This is a central point in Albanese's interpretation. She argues, in fact, that Fascism was a reaction to the crisis in the liberal states produced by mass politics and was able to spread traditional messages and values, providing a sense of continuity, and that it symbolised a model for the transformation of the European liberal regimes, at the same time preserving the social order and integrating the masses in a traditional and authoritarian social context. Between the Bolshevik revolution and the broadening of representative institutions, in Albanese's opinion the Italian movement and regime was the only alternative possible ‘to those European countries whose political regimes appeared to be crisis-ridden, tottering or inadequate, even from the point of view of the ruling classes or the establishment or where not stable enough’ (p. 174). The book shows a point of view that the author developed in a recent publication, Dittature mediterranee. Sovversioni fasciste e colpi di stato in Italia, Spagna e Portogallo (Rome-Bari, Laterza, 2016). In that book, quoted by Albanese in the preface, Fascism is explicitly examined in relation to the situation in Spain and in Portugal, considering them as three similar authoritarian ways of restoring power to the European bourgeoisie in the 1920s.

Albanese's book raises some general questions. In the preface the author points out the crucial role of George L. Mosse's research, but she modifies his interpretations, mixing different phenomena into a vast amalgam of antidemocratic ideas. For example, the book shows the juxtaposition between nationalists and fascists, before and after the March on Rome, as if they had the same political projects and ideals. But it also shows how the nationalists were much closer to the conservative world than the fascists (to the extent that they tried until the very end to convince Mussolini to accept the right-wing liberal Antonio Salandra as prime minister of a coalition government). Another example of the great differences between nationalists and fascists that Albanese does not take into account is in the way of using violence. For the nationalists it was strictly linked to the restoration of order to defend the monarchical institutions from the enemies of the nation. For the fascists, on the other hand, violence was a crucial element of a party that was a militia, a key aspect of the new politics described by Mosse, which considered the political confrontation as an apocalyptic religious battle.

Lastly, it is surprising to read that it was only the historians who were working for the Fascist regime who did not underestimate the violence perpetrated by the squadristi, whereas between the 1970s and the 1990s distinguished historians like Alberto Aquarone, Adrian Lyttelton, Paolo Nello and Emilio Gentile underlined the centrality of violence in the fascist movement. Among them, in 1989 the book Storia del partito fascista by Emilio Gentile showed the key role of violence not only as instrumental in coercion but above all as an element of a fundamentalist mentality. This is a cultural issue that is absent from Albanese's book and that is essential for understanding the nature and originality of the fascist ideology and mentality. More than 30 years ago, Gentile underlined that violence was not just a weapon to generate terror but a way to experience politics, so in fact fascist brutality was very different from the narrow-minded measures of previous governments or from the authoritarian culture mentioned by Albanese. The 1989 book ends with the idea that the March on Rome actually established the Fascist regime, namely a totalitarian regime with the aim of carrying out the palingenetic revolution that had started in the trenches during the First World War and would be able to destroy the corrupt and senescent bourgeois society in order to create a new universal and entirely fascist civilisation.

In her research, Albanese seems, in an up-to-date way, to follow the traditional interpretations of Fascism as a bourgeois authoritarian regime. In recent decades, however, international historiography has considered Fascism as an original, modern and totalitarian form of revolutionary nationalism that arose from the First World War experience. These studies have rejected the idea of a single universal fascist phenomenon, demonstrating instead a well-defined description of Italian Fascism. In Albanese's book Fascism appears as a more violent phenomenon but still close to the bourgeois authoritarian and, de facto, reactionary regimes.