This book presents a study of Italy's transition to democracy after the Second World War, focusing on ‘the critical years between 1943 and 1948’ (p. 2). By applying a new conceptual framework to the study of that period, and more generally to the establishment of postwar democracy in Italy, the author aims to suggest an innovative understanding of this phase of Italian history. In particular, Forlenza adopts an ‘anthropological and experiential perspective on democracy and democratization’ (p. 16). Accordingly, the stated goal of the book is to step ‘outside the sphere of formal political activity and government’ and to focus instead ‘on the aspirations, expectations, and hopes that people formulated under conditions of political and existential uncertainty’ (p. 2). The author's central argument is, in fact, that the roots of Italian democracy have to be traced first and foremost ‘in lived experience and existential crisis’, rather than in the combination of ‘underlying ideologies, institutional engineering, and the decisions made by political leaders’ (pp. 2–3). In other words, according to Forlenza, democratisation in Italy after the Second World War was ‘dependent on individual and collective experience’ and ‘not only immediately followed the war but also was shaped by people's wartime experience’ (pp. 13–14 and 212): ‘there were’ – Forlenza writes – ‘moments and actions that demonstrated democratic potential after the end of Fascism, both during the war and before the formal establishment of democracy’ (pp. 7–8, 13–14, and 212).

By adopting this anthropological perspective, the book proposes a reading of socio-political transition and democratisation in postwar Italy as ‘liminal phases’. More specifically, Forlenza interprets Italy's path toward democracy as ‘a rite of passage’, which is used by the author as the all-embracing conceptual framework relevant to understanding what happened in Italy between 1943 and 1948. According to Forlenza, this path to democracy/rite of passage consists of three phases: first, separation from the old order in the summer and fall of 1943; second, the liminal period proper, which lasted from 1943 through to the end of the war and its immediate aftermath; third, the return to order and reaggregation, which started after the end of the war and lasted until the consolidation of 1948, marked by the adoption of the new republican Constitution and the first parliamentary elections.

The chapters of the book focus on some pieces in the puzzle of the ‘existential crisis’ that led to the rebirth of Italy as a democratic republic. In the first chapter, Forlenza conceptualises the end of Fascism (and its consequences) and the beginning of the civil war, which thrust Italy into a transitional chaotic phase, as the established ‘markers of certainty’ had disappeared, and into a ‘liminal situation of contested sovereignty’ (pp. 18–19). Then, in Chapter 2, the author examines the meanings of ‘monarchy’ and ‘republic’, how these meanings were modified in the wake of critical events during the civil war, and the range of expectations held by political actors and ordinary people which affected their vote in the 1946 referendum. Chapter 3 aims at understanding ‘the meaning that Italians ascribed to America during the war’, highlighting the ‘critical influence of this meaning on the emergence, nature, and consolidation of post-Fascist democracy’ (p. 69). Chapter 4 explores the struggle between Communism and anti-Communism, while Chapter 5 – the most convincing, in my opinion – outlines how and why the image of the Risorgimento became established as ‘the paradigm for interpretation of the Resistance and its role in Italian history’, and how the Resistance, as a second Risorgimento, became ‘the dominant narrative of the war, albeit contested, and the official lieu de mémoire of post-Fascist Italy’ (p. 140). Finally, in Chapter 6, the author takes into consideration the ‘meanings of democracy’ that emerged in 1943–5 and examines their influence on postwar politics and society.

The underlying argument of Forlenza's book would deserve a thorough evaluation of its strengths and weaknesses (namely in relation to its approach and methodology and the interpretations he elaborates based on these premises). Here, due to the space allowed, I can only address some of the questions provoked by the volume.

It is evident – as Forlenza rightly highlights – that the dramatic experiences ‘Italians lived through between 1943 and 1945 led to the destruction and reconstruction of beliefs, values, and norms’ as well as sustaining the ‘emergence of a new order’ (p. 211). However, would this new order necessarily mean, for ‘ordinary people’, ‘democracy’, as Forlenza seems to suggest in the book? And, if this was the case, what were the precise ideas of democracy that ‘ordinary people’ had in mind? The book insightfully points out that ‘because of its ambiguity, liminality […] generates innovation,’ but also ‘leads to the reassertion of core symbols, structures, and values’ (p. 13). This assumption evidently involves the need to take into consideration the heritage and the weight of Fascism on Italian postwar culture. The second set of questions therefore is: how much did Fascism influence the culture of ‘ordinary people’ and the collective mentality during the postwar years? If this influence was extremely relevant, as I believe, how did it affect Italian democracy and, more specifically, the democratic culture of Italian citizens? The final and perhaps most important issue is the following: during the postwar years, the political culture of relevant areas of Italian society, strongly marked by ideologies and cultural traditions which had not entirely ‘resolved the contradictions’ in their ‘approach to democracy’ – I am referring, for example, to the already mentioned heritage of Fascism or to some important trends within both the Catholic and Communist culture – probably struggled for a long time before assuming a solid and unambiguous democratic attitude and behaviour. Therefore the last decisive question is: is it not true that Italy was a democracy (though a ‘difficult’ one) thanks first of all to (some of, at least) the political parties that were able to respond democratically – as one of the first historians who brilliantly connected history and anthropology, George L. Mosse, observed in his seminal 1979 interview – to the ‘challenges of modern mass politics’ and to channel Italians’ ‘potentially anti-democratic opinions into a fragile but effective politics’ (pp. 121–2)?