Victoria de Grazia is Moore Collegiate Professor of History at Columbia University and a founding editor of Radical History Review. Her widely translated, prizewinning books include Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe and How Fascism Ruled Women. She has received the Woodrow Wilson, Jean Monnet, and Guggenheim fellowships and the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome.
[A] fascinating book on the Fascist years, and particularly its
social mores…Teruzzi was indeed the perfect Fascist: disciplined,
unscrupulous, brutish, fanatically loyal to Mussolini… The
brilliance of de Grazia’s book lies in the way that she has made a
page-turner of Teruzzi’s chaotic life, while providing a scholarly
and engrossing portrait of the two decades of Fascist rule.
*Wall Street Journal*
[A] captivating investigation into the trials and tribulations of
Attilio Teruzzi—one of Benito Mussolini’s most trusted high-ranking
officials…A work of serious historical research by one of the great
historians of Italian history…Not unlike the popular thrillers on
Netflix in its suspense and surprises, but this story is told with
a scholar’s eye in reading, analyzing, and interpreting archival
documents, and a historian’s experience in placing it all within
the context of Mussolini’s Italy.
*Los Angeles Review of Books*
On the question of contemporary fascism, and the debate between
those who see in Trump & Co its resurgence and those who do not,
few writers have matched Victoria de Grazia for coolness of
observation and depth of insight…A singular work that chronicles
the life of Attilio Teruzzi, an army officer who became commander
of the Blackshirts under Il Duce. Through the story of Teruzzi’s
marriage to Lilliana Weinman, an American-Jewish opera singer, de
Grazia has produced a masterwork on the nature of fascist politics
and culture.
*New Statesman*
The book’s appeal goes well beyond its diligent scrutiny of life
under Fascism…There is the perverse pleasure of checking off its
foreshadowing of our own recent moment: the sleaze, the
incompetence, the militias, the cynical embrace of religion, the
gilded son-in-law…And there is the elemental satisfaction of the
story itself, which progresses like a classic war novel, private
passions unfolding against a backdrop of steadily escalating public
strife, in settings ranging from New York to Addis Ababa, boudoirs
to battlefields, silk-lined music rooms to colonial churches
palisaded by shards of exploded poison gas canisters.
*London Review of Books*
Explore[s] toxic masculinity and the contradictory relationship
between the public roles and private lives of Fascist elites.
*Times Literary Supplement*
[A] pioneering work… It examines the hypocrisies of totalitarian
leaders and the contradictions inherent in the regimes they
build…One of the lessons of De Grazia’s epic microhistory is that
to truly understand dictatorships, we need to understand the
aspirations, behaviors, and vanities of those just beneath the
leaders in the hierarchy and the role they play in advancing the
goals of the totalitarian state.
*H-Net Reviews*
Engaging, well-written, and thoroughly researched…The Perfect
Fascist has contemporary political relevance, as ultra-nationalist
politics have gained traction in several western democracies.
*New York Journal of Books*
As solid an explanation as any work I have read about the lure of
Fascism in a stressed society, the type of people most subject to
that lure, and how a totalitarian regime takes hold in a
nation…Definitely a biography for our times. It helps us understand
how and why business and religious leaders, and other elite sectors
in Italy, embraced Fascism, and appeared to do so out of an
inordinate fear of anything approaching ‘socialism.’
*San Diego Jewish World*
This dive into the first half of the last century purifies us of
many ills—including the idea of a ‘fascist temperament’ or
‘authoritarian personality.’ De Grazia sets out to show how
‘fascists are made, not born’: how the ‘decent man’ she takes as
her subject wound up leading gangs of thugs and collaborating with
the SS…The story De Grazia tells us is emblematic of a certain age,
although its plot couldn’t have been dreamed up even by Hollywood’s
most twisted screenwriters.
*Sidecar*
Reveals how ideology corrupts the truth, how untrammeled ambition
destroys the soul, and how the vanity of white male supremacy
distorts emotion, making even love a matter of state. Mussolini’s
concept of a virile, nationalist, all-conquering New Man continues
to hold a terrifying grip over political and personal thought
today, just as it did for Attilio Teruzzi nearly a century ago. De
Grazia sheds welcome light on the mystery of why some women, who
practically always lose out, also sign up.
*Sonia Purnell, author of A Woman of No Importance*
This is a perfect book! Original, thoughtful, and timely, The
Perfect Fascist beautifully exposes the homogeneity of fascist
aspirations and reveals the personal conflicts and paradoxes these
aspirations bring with them, including for fascists themselves. Its
two entwined narratives—one political and public, the other
personal and private—perfectly complement one another and help us
understand why the personal is political for those who insist on
reshaping people and society.
*Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran*
The Perfect Fascist is an original and important book. It tells a
dramatic story, based on rich documentation, and delivers a probing
analysis of the fascist ‘strong man.’ De Grazia’s attention to
Teruzzi’s private life, his behavior as suitor and husband, deepens
and enriches our understanding of the nature of leadership in
Mussolini’s regime and of masculinity, virility, and honor in
Italian fascist culture.
*Robert O. Paxton, author of The Anatomy of Fascism*
Takes us into the dark and complicated heart of Italian fascism...
An extraordinary story that illuminates the ways in which the
all-consuming nature of fascism distorted Italian society and
destroyed the lives of individuals. I could not put it down.
*Margaret MacMillan, author of Paris 1919*
A fascinating exploration of Italian fascism through the career and
intimate relationships of Attilio Teruzzi (1882–1950), one of
Benito Mussolini’s closest allies…Offers both incisive scholarship
and juicy biographical details.
*Publishers Weekly*
Offers uncommonly remarkable insights into Fascism, Mussolini and
his regime, and culture and society more generally.
*Choice*
A deeply researched…book, [and] an innovative approach to the
character and development of Italian Fascism…[de Grazia] offers a
multifaceted portrait of Fascist Italy.
*Journal of Modern History*
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