A Short History of Italy (476-1900)

The author offers a compact chronological survey of Italian history from the end of imperial rule through the modern era, tracing political disintegration and the rise of medieval institutions, the increasing power of the papacy, the emergence of communes and despotisms, and the intellectual and artistic revival of the Renaissance. He describes foreign invasions and diplomatic struggles, the cultural achievements of the sixteenth-century flowering, the subsequent centuries of political stagnation, the upheavals of the Napoleonic period, and the nineteenth-century movements leading to national unity, concluding with a concise assessment of late nineteenth-century Italy.