R. J. B. Bosworth. Mussolini’s Italy: Life Under the Dictatorship, 1915-1945. London: Penguin, 2006. I have plenty of books on generic fascism, German fascism, British fascism … so one on the original fascism doesn’t seem excessive!
Paul Kennedy. The Parliament of Man: The United Nations and the Quest for World Government. London: Allen Lane, 2006. Only one chapter on the pre-1945 period, mostly the League of Nations of course. Actually I should track down a decent history of the League one day.
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I am very interested in how “Mussolini’s Italy” turns out. Could you please write up a recommendation (to buy or not as the case may be) when you are finished?
I took a Faschism and Nazism class in undergrad at Penn State. Great class, but focused only on German F+N. (We were told this would be the case on the first day of class) I was hoping for a politics class comparing and contrasting Faschism in Germany, Italy and Spain. Enough was said about the military build up to keep me interested though.
I’ll try to remember — it might take me a while to get around to it though, given the size of my unread pile! I’ve read a couple of good reviews of it, and I can say that it looks the goods — it’s certainly long enough (over 500 pages). As I understand it, Bosworth is one of the top people on Fascism, at leats in English, so that augurs well.
I was lucky to be able to do a 4th year subject on fascist Europe which was brilliant — Italy, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Romania and so on — sounds like the sort of thing you were hoping for.