rcmnd

Ruth Ben-Ghiat

American historian of fascism and authoritarian leaders; professor of history and Italian studies at New York University; author of Strongmen (2020); publishes the newsletter Lucid.

5 things

Fascist SpectacleBook Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi

recommended

Fascist Spectacle is a valuable book from a sociologist who is quite theoretical but also very, very attentive to how policies play out in daily life and to the connection between rhetoric and action.

Five Books interview: the best books on Fascism

2019-06-01·fivebooks.com ↗

The Origins of Nazi ViolenceBook Enzo Traverso & Janet Lloyd

recommended

The Origins of Nazi Violence is a wonderful book that identifies the roots of the Nazi killing machine.

Five Books interview: the best books on Fascism

2019-06-01·fivebooks.com ↗

The Origins of TotalitarianismBook Hannah Arendt

recommended

Your readers may be familiar with The Origins of Totalitarianism and her historical genealogies of the main components of Nazism, which begin with the imperial mindset and imperial methods of repression during the colonial period.

Five Books interview: the best books on Fascism

2019-06-01·fivebooks.com ↗

Family LexiconBook Natalia Ginzburg

recommended

Family Lexicon, which is more like a novelized memoir, is a valuable testimony of how private life unfolded during Fascist Italy.

Five Books interview: the best books on Fascism

2019-06-01·fivebooks.com ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.