Il Duce's Other Woman

by Philip V. Cannistraro, Brian R. Sullivan

Overview

"[A] well-informed account of the woman behind Mussolini's rise to power... Margherita Sarfatti, an art critic and daughter of an influential Venetian Jewish family... became known as his 'inspiratrice,' directing his reading (Proudhon and Machiavelli, among others), bolstering his belief in his greatness, and helping him to mold his vision of a new Roman Empire. Though an ardent socialist, Sarfatti supported Italian involvement in WWI, an action that got her expelled from the Socialist Party. After the war, she and Mussolini worked together to forge the Fascist Party from two unlikely allies, the nationalists and socialists, and watched their creation grow to power, nourished by conditions of mass unemployment, street-fighting, and demagoguery given credibility by electoral success. Sarfatti, the authors contend, had 'a far more flexible and inventive political imagination' than Mussolini, and she was a central figure during these formative years — yet her affair with the dictator, and her influence, waned during the early 30's. In 1938, in the face of Il Duce's growing anti-Semitism, Sarfatti fled to Argentina with two suitcases full of jewels and modern art, treasures that she later parlayed into a position as one of the most important art collectors of the mid-century. She died in Italy in 1961... hers is a remarkable, sometimes tragic, tale." — Kirkus

"[A] carefully researched, highly detailed, and interesting... history of fascist Italy. Its authors, both with academic affiliations, have avoided the pitfalls of academese to produce an account that will be enjoyable to the general reader." — Barbara Walden, Library Journal

"A person of exceptional erudition and culture, Margherita Sarfatti (1880-1961) was the Italian dictator's lover, political adviser and intellectual mentor, the authors show in their enlightening study... In their excellent biography of this difficult, dynamic, memorable woman, Cannistraro and Sullivan present aspects of her lover's career not previously explored in detail: Mussolini's experiences as a solider in WW I, his editorship of the socialist paper Avanti! and his active interest in creating a favorable international image of Fascist Italy." — Publishers Weekly

"Philip Cannistraro and Brian Sullivan have drawn on an extraordinary range of private papers and archives in order to write her biography. Besides the main plot of Sarfatti's long involvement with Mussolini, their work contains a number of fascinating sub-plots. Their biography is important for the history of Italian Jews, socialism, feminism, the relationship between art and politics, Fascist propaganda and the image of Mussolini's regime in the United States... it is hard not to be impressed by her energy, her boundless appetite for new knowledge and new experience, and her resilience in adversity... a fascinating biography of a remarkable woman." — Adrian Lyttelton, The New York Review of Books

"This long, detailed and deeply researched book... becomes less of a biography than an account of the development of Mussolini's ideas, but with a new and original slant, never before explored... Margherita Sarfatti was a victim of her own making, corrupted by sexual obsession and a drive for power." — Raleigh Trevelyan, The New York Times

Product Details

BN ID:	2940184353913
Publisher:	Plunkett Lake Press
Publication date:	03/31/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Born in New York City, Philip Vincent Cannistraro (1942-2005) earned his BA (1965), MA (1966) and PhD (1971) from New York University. A recognized authority on the Italian American experience, the history of modern Italy and fascism, he taught history at Florida State University in Tallahassee (1971-82) and at Drexel University where he was appointed head of the History-Politics Department in 1988. He later directed the Italian American Studies Program at Queens College and was editor-in-chief of the Italian American Review. He curated the 1999–2000 New York Historical Society exhibit on the Italians of New York.

His book The Factory of Consent was the first historiographical attempt to reconstruct the structure and functioning of the propaganda apparatus of Mussolini’s regime. Cannistraro edited the first critical dictionary on fascism and also researched the history of Italian emigration to the United States. He was the first distinguished professor of Italian American studies associated with the Calandra Institute.

Cannistraro’s other books include Civilizations of the World, Il Duce’s Other Woman written over 7 years with Brian Sullivan, The Western Perspective: A History of European Civilization in the West and Blackshirts in Little Italy. In 1993, Cannistraro won the Prezzolini Prize for outstanding contributions to Italian Culture. He was twice a Fulbright fellow in Italy and also received the Howard Marraro Prize.


Born in 1945 and raised in Manhattan, Brian Robert Sullivan attended Regis High School and Columbia College (1963-67). He served as a US Marine officer (1967-70) and in Vietnam, received a Silver Star and Purple Heart. He returned to Columbia Graduate School, then did dissertation research in Rome (1973-74). Sullivan taught at New York area private schools (1976-82) while completing his dissertation, “A Thirst for Glory” on Mussolini and the Italian military, 1922-1936. After teaching at Drexel University (1982-84), Yale (1984-88) and the Naval War College (1988-91), he helped plan deception for Operation Desert Storm and became a Senior Research Professor at the Institute for National Strategic Studies in Washington (1991-97).

After 1998, Sullivan wrote full time: over 50 entries for the Historical Dictionary of Fascist Italy, dozens of scholarly book reviews and some 60 articles on Italian and military topics. Sullivan found Margherita Sarfatti’s memoirs, translated and edited them as My Fault: Mussolini As I Knew Him (2014).