With the end of the Cold War and the prospect of a federal Europe ever closer, this book is a timely reassessment of the processes by which western Europe was reborn out of the devastation and despair of 1945. Concentrating on the first postwar decade and making rich use of the latest research findings, David Ellwood gives a detailed account of the practicalities of reconstruction - how it was done, what it cost, who paid for it, and what those involved hoped for, expected and actually received.

With the end of the Cold War and the prospect of a federal Europe ever closer, this book is a timely reassessment of the processes by which western Europe was reborn out of the devastation and despair of 1945. Concentrating on the first postwar decade and making rich use of the latest research findings, David Ellwood gives a detailed account of the practicalities of reconstruction - how it was done, what it cost, who paid for it, and what those involved hoped for, expected and actually received.

Transmissions of Memory: Echoes, Traumas and Nostalgia in Post-World War II Italian Culture discusses cultural products-films, poetry, fiction, architectural buildings, autobiographical writing, and social media-to individuate through them the dynamics of memory. The field of analysis is Italian culture from World War II to the contemporary times, and the volume has in a gendered approach one of its focuses, offering an encompassing view on cultural memory and highlighting the similarities between gendered revisitation and revisitation of the past. The volume is divided into three sections: cultural transmissions, fractured memories, and nostalgia. In the chapters herewith the study of memory through these forms hints at a sense of transformation and often enrichment or resilience, individual or collective, that values more the present and the future rather than the past.