For Italian intellectuals, the terms fascist and antifascist continue to be the hard currency of contemporary political debate. When Professor Renzo de Felice suggests that fascism describes a moment in the Italian past--and only that--he is challenging the very heart of current orthodoxy. His ideas about fascism have a broad significance and represent a radical departure from conventional wisdom. This book remains important because of de Felice's vast knowledge of fascism and rigorous historical analysis. This dialogue between de Felice and American scholar Michael Ledeen ranges from empirical research on the history of Mussolini and the Fascist Regime in Italy to seeking a definition of fascism and determining its general characteristics.

For Italian intellectuals, the terms "fascist" and "antifascist" continue to be the hard currency of contemporary political debate. When Professor Renzo de Felice suggests that fascism describes a moment in the Italian past--and only that--he is challenging the very heart of current orthodoxy. His ideas about fascism have a broad significance and represent a radical departure from conventional wisdom. This book remains important because of de Felice's vast knowledge of fascism and rigorous historical analysis. This dialogue between de Felice and American scholar Michael Ledeen ranges from empirical research on the history of Mussolini and the Fascist Regime in Italy to seeking a definition of fascism and determining its general characteristics.

Internationally renowned scholar Renzo De Felice's pioneering study of the Jews of Libya is, in many ways, a microcosm of the major sources of conflict in the modern Middle East. This is the first English translation of Ebrei in un paese arabo, originally published by Il Mulino, Bologna, in 1978. The author's broad-ranging and meticulous research has enabled him to reconstruct the contemporary history of the Jews in Libya with an incredible richness of detail, bringing into vivid relief the social, religious, cultural, and political lives of a people caught between centuries of tradition and a series of governments bent on plunging them headfirst into the modern world. This story-fraught with the passion, drama, tragicomedy, and conflict of a society in transition-will be an invaluable resource for scholars in Middle Eastern studies, Jewish studies, and contemporary European history. The wealth of documentation, much of it previously unknown or unpublished, makes this a particularly useful book.