The Italian Revolution: The End of Politics, Italian Style? by Mark GilbertReview by: Stanley HoffmannForeign Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1995), pp. 128-129Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20047414 .

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transformation of Britain into a multira

cial "magpie" society in the 1950s. It is

quite a demolition job.

From the Boer War to the Cold War: Essays on

Twentieth-Century Europe, by a. j.

p. Taylor. New York: Penguin, 1995,

454 pp. $34.95. This collection of approximately 70 essays of varying lengths, including many book reviews and talks for the bbc, is a dazzling

display of Taylor s knack for incisive,

witty, and opinionated analysis and his

passion for understanding the motives

and foibles of statesmen. There are fine,

sympathetic treatments of Trotsky and

Roger Casement, excellent character

sketches of Balfour, Lloyd George, Bald

win, Bevin, and (above all) Churchill, and a disturbing lecture on British domestic

politics during the First World War. Hitler is described as having "had a depth and elaboration of evil all his own, as

though something primitive had emerged from the bowels of the earth." Taylor

emerges from this collection as a generous reviewer and a

farsighted commentator:

in 1966 he wrote that "Communists would

like to be all the wicked things their

opponents say they are. They would like

to be subversive, unscrupulous, and ruth

less. In fact, they are only unsuccessful."

The Crisis of the Italian State: From the

Origins of the Cold War to the Fall of Berlusconi, by Patrick mccarthy.

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995, 220 pp. $39.95.

This analysis of the crisis of Italy's parlia

mentary and party system by a learned

and thought-provoking professor of

European studies at The Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center provides an

account of the turbulent politics of

1992-94. That period saw the "revenge" of the magistrates against the clientelistic

political system set up by the Christian Democrats and their allies, the collapse of the Christian Democratic Party, and

the rise of Berlusconi's Forza Italia. But

McCarthy's ambitions go far beyond this: he tries to explain how the post-Mus solini system emerged, to throw light on the complex relations between the Vati

can (to which he attributes a decisive

influence) and the faction-ridden, Chris tian Democrats to show that the role of

the United States in Italian politics was less constraining than received opinion has it, and to examine the reasons for the

relative failure of the Italian Communist

Party. McCarthy has many shrewd things to say about the corruption of the state

and its relations with a rapidly changing Italian society. For all its lucidity, insight, and originality, this would have been an even better book if it had been longer and less compressed.

The Italian Revolution: The End of Politics, Italian Style?

by mark

gilbert. Boulder: Westview, 1995,

204 pp. $44-95 (paper, $i4.95) Anyone wishing for a much more detailed

account of the Italian political crisis than

the one offered in McCarthy's book will find it here. Gilbert, a political scientist, is reluctant to speculate about the future, but

he does a very good job analyzing the role of the Mafia, the rise and decline of the

Northern League, the fate of the commu

nists, and the sweeping character and

effects of the judges' Operation Clean Hands. The complexities, paradoxes, and mystifications of Italian politics as

described here are likely to leave the reader

[l28] FOREIGN AFFAIRS - Volume74No.6

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Recent Books

wondering how this system, worthy of a

cheap thriller, could have lasted so long.

(See McCarthy's book for the answer.)

Nazi Germany: A New History, by klaus

p. fischer. New York: Continuum,

1995.734 pp. $37-50 This massive study by an intellectual his

torian is an excellent, clear, comprehen

sive, and sensible synthesis of all that is

known about Hitler and his hideous

regime. Fischer wisely emphasizes the

many factors that made Germans suscep tible to the totalitarian adventure and

shows how skillfully and ruthlessly Hitler

exploited these circumstances. His analysis of the "totalitarian racial state"?with its

brutality and its confusion?is exemplary. Fischer tries hard to understand and

explain Hitler's personality, and it is not

his fault if his attempts are not entirely

satisfactory: the man, with all his hatreds,

delusions, and talent for leadership was

too monstrous ever to be elucidated.

Farewell, Revolution: Disputed Legacies, France, 1789/1989. by steven

Laurence kaplan. Ithaca: Cornell

University Press, 1995,573 pp. $29.95.

Originally published in France, this book

by a historian ofthat country's eighteenth

century is a highly entertaining, exhaustive

(but not exhausting) account of the poli tics and theater of the commemoration in

1989 of the 200th anniversary of the

French Revolution. Staged by a socialist

regime, the event tried to find a middle course between uncritical celebration and

the newly fashionable debunking of the French Revolution, by a coalition of

counter-revolutionaries and (often ex

communist) neoconservatives, as a fore

runner of totalitarianism. The book is

both a brilliant description of the show put on by Jean-Paul Goude, "designer-artist

adman," and a critique of the prevailing

tendency to reduce the revolution to its

ideological dimensions and deviations.

Western Hemisphere KENNETH MAXWELL

The Black Diaspora: Five Centuries of the Black Experience outside Africa,

by

ronald segal. New York: Farrar, Straus ?cGiroux, 1995,477 pp. $27\5?.

A Tocquevillesque wandering through the history and contemporary life experi ences of communities of African origin, this book focuses on the world bordering the Atlantic. A well-known writer with

several excellent books to his credit,

Segal is South African. He was born, he

says, "into a Diaspora myself, the Jewish

Diaspora, in a country, South Africa, where Jews occupied both a privileged and a

perilous position." An outspoken critic of apartheid, he fled to England

with Oliver Tambo in i960. His account of the history of the slave

trade is lucid if not particularly original, though slavery is central to the black

diaspora and provides the central organ

izing principle for Segal's explorations. The strength of his book lies in the accounts of his own travels and observa

tions from Brazil to Michigan and from

Martinique to Cuba. Faced with the cur

rent gloomy avalanche of books about

African-Americans, consisting largely of

To order any book reviewed or advertised in Foreign Affairs, fax 1-203-966-4329.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS- November/December 1995 [ 12 9 ]

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