Russian Peasant Women Who Refused to Marry: Spasovite Old Believers in the 18th-19th Centuries

Ruth Ben-Ghiat provides the first in-depth study of feature and documentary films produced under the auspices of Mussolini’s government that took as their subjects or settings Italy’s African and Balkan colonies. These "empire films" were Italy's entry into an international market for the exotic. The films engaged its most experienced and cosmopolitan directors (Augusto Genina, Mario Camerini) as well as new filmmakers (Roberto Rossellini) who would make their marks in the postwar years. Ben-Ghiat sees these films as part of the aesthetic development that would lead to neo-realism. Shot in Libya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, these movies reinforced Fascist racial and labor policies and were largely forgotten after the war. Ben-Ghiat restores them to Italian and international film history in this gripping account of empire, war, and the cinema of dictatorship.

Italian Fascism's Empire Cinema (New Directions in National Cinemas)

Humor & Entertainment

Ben-Ghiat, Ruth

Stoler, Ann Laura

Movies

Indiana University Press

What modern authoritarian leaders have in common (and how they can be stopped). Ruth Ben-Ghiat is the expert on the "strongman" playbook employed by authoritarian demagogues from Mussolini to Putin--enabling her to predict with uncanny accuracy the recent experience in America. In Strongmen, she lays bare the blueprint these leaders have followed over the past 100 years, and empowers us to recognize, resist, and prevent their disastrous rule in the future. For ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of truth, treasure, and the protections of democracy. They promise law and order, then legitimize lawbreaking by financial, sexual, and other predators. They use masculinity as a symbol of strength and a political weapon. Taking what you want, and getting away with it, becomes proof of male authority. They use propaganda, corruption, and violence to stay in power. Vladimir Putin and Mobutu Sese Seko's kleptocracies, Augusto Pinochet's torture sites, Benito Mussolini and Muammar Gaddafi's systems of sexual exploitation, and Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump's relentless misinformation: all show how authoritarian rule, far from ensuring stability, is marked by destructive chaos. No other type of leader is so transparent about prioritizing self-interest over the public good. As one country after another has discovered, the strongman is at his worst when true guidance is most needed by his country. Recounting the acts of solidarity and dignity that have undone strongmen over the past 100 years, Ben-Ghiat makes vividly clear that only by seeing the strongman for what he is--and by valuing one another as he is unable to do--can we stop him, now and in the future.

Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

History

Historical Study & Educational Resources

W.W.Norton&Company

Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945 (Studies on the History of Society and Culture) (Volume 42)

Ruth Ben-Ghiat's innovative cultural history of Mussolini's dictatorship is a provocative discussion of the meanings of modernity in interwar Italy. Eloquent, pathbreaking, and deft in its use of a broad range of materials, this work argues that fascism appealed to many Italian intellectuals as a new model of modernity that would resolve the contemporary European crisis as well as long-standing problems of the national past. Ben-Ghiat shows that―at a time of fears over the erosion of national and social identities―Mussolini presented fascism as a movement that would allow economic development without harm to social boundaries and national traditions. She demonstrates that although the regime largely failed in its attempts to remake Italians as paragons of a distinctly fascist model of mass society, twenty years of fascism did alter the landscape of Italian cultural life. Among younger intellectuals in particular, the dictatorship left a legacy of practices and attitudes that often continued under different political rubrics after 1945.

Europe

University of California Press

World

'A gripping and illuminating picture of how strongmen have deployed violence, seduction, and corruption' Daniel Ziblatt, co-author of How Democracies Die\n'A timely analysis of how a certain kind of charisma delivers political disaster' Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny\nOurs is the age of the strongman. Countries from Russia to India, Turkey to America are ruled by men who combine populist appeal with authoritarian policy. They have reshaped their countries around them, creating cults of personality which earn the loyalty of millions. And they do so by drawing on a playbook of behaviour established by figures such as Benito Mussolini, Muammar Gaddafi and Adolf Hitler. So why - despite the evidence of history - do strongmen still hold such appeal for us?\nHistorian Ruth Ben-Ghiat draws on analysis of everything from gender to corruption and propaganda to explain who these political figures are - and how they manipulate our own history, fears and desires in search of power at any cost. Strongmen is a fierce and perceptive history, and a vital step in understanding how to combat the forces which seek to derail democracy and seize our rights.

Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall

Profile Books

Ours is the age of the strongman. Russia, India, Turkey and America are ruled by men who, as they have risen to the top, have reshaped their countries around them, creating cults of personality which earn the loyalty of millions. And as they do so, they draw on a playbook of behaviour established by figures such as Benito Mussolini, Muammar Gaddafi and Adolf Hitler. Here, political historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat draws on analysis of everything from gender and sexuality to diplomatic strategy to explain who these political figures are - and how they manipulate our own history, fears and desires in search of power at any cost.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ben-Ghiat, Ruth

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Italian Fascism's Empire Cinema (New Directions in National Cinemas)

Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945 (Studies on the History of Society and Culture) (Volume 42)

Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945 (Studies on the History of Society and Culture) (Volume 42)

Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall

Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall