The original Italian edition of this book, published in Italy 2004 (Rizzoli), was an immediate best-seller there and the celebrity jazz musician son appeared with great fanfare in the national media. His revisionist memoir helped fuel the fascist sympathizers and sparked further debate about Mussolini’s place in history.

To responsibly publish this English edition in North America, renowned Italian political cultural expert Alexander Stille of Columbia University has written a powerful 21-page introductory essay contextualizing the son?s understandable bias in favor of his father while more importantly confronting the dangers of this portrayal and our responsibility to recognize it as a part of the rising wave of fascism.

The American Library Association Booklist review similarly concludes about the context: “Perhaps it is easy to dismiss this work as an understandable attempt of a son to rehabilitate the image of a father he loved, but given the resurgence of neo-Fascist political parties in Italy, this is a disturbing but relevant effort.”

To underscore another aspect of the influence of context, namely that the son was a well-regarded entertainer and celebrity with a media platform from which to be heard, when he passed away on February 3, 2006 his death made international news and obituaries appeared worldwide including in The New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters, Guardian U.K. and Telegraph U.K., to name a few. All referred to him as beloved, an acclaimed entertainer who played with Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, and other greats, and that his sister-in-law was Sophia Loren.

This book becomes much more noteworthy as a danger to be paid attention to when you take into account the son’s celebrity, his intimate perspective from within the family, and Alessandra Mussolini’s (the author?s daughter and thus the dictator’s granddaughter) prominence in the Italian parliament today and her audacious support of her grandfather.

As examples of the growing Mussolini cult-like following, April 28th is the anniversary of Mussolini’s death (1945) and each year on this day tens of thousands of fascist sympathizers across Italy and worldwide pay their respects. On the last weekend in October 2006, to mark the anniversary of Mussolini’s “March on Rome ” in 1922, some 6000 black-shirted fascist sympathizers rallied in his hometown Predappio to pay homage and collect souvenirs.

Kenneth Kales, Publisher
Kales Press