Adeft and intellectually wide-ranging marshalling of historical, journalistic, legislative and judicial, cinematic, and literary materials read as both primary and secondary sources, and woven together to produce convincing reconstructions of 'the linkages between public events, and the publicity they receive, and the broader changes that they somehow crystallize or inadvertently reflect.' In contemporary mass society, this is just the kind of complex reading multiple texts and images that creates consensus and the 'true story' of events. - H-Italy
This collection will prove to be an interesting and useful compendium for Italian undergraduate courses that bear on political culture, history, cultural studies and film. These essays make clear historical connections to both the specific case under analysis and the broader context of the complex dynamics of political forces and alliances at a given time. They bring important attention to how past crimes such as the case of the Cervi brothers or of Carlo and Nello Rosselli have been received and reinterpreted at different times. Indeed, through the dynamics of murder cases, this book highlights how such violent acts always occurred in periods of great political, cultural and social transformation in Italian society. - Eugenia Paulicelli, Queens College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York
The volume aims to explore some of the most famous cases of murder and analyze them comparatively in their historical, cultural, and political contexts. Arguing that often unresolved cases of murder of assassination have both marked key moments in modern Italian history and served as primary sites for the construction and contestation of historical memory, the pieces do, indeed, provide a cumulative sense that Italy has a unique relationship to the crime mystery. - Molly Tambor, H-Italy