The New Italians

I can't imagine writing a book that would attempt to describe the modern United States. The country is so large and so different from region to region: the San Francisco Bay Area to Huntsville Alabama. Italy is a far smaller country than the United States, both in geographical area and in population. But a book on Italian society can still only provide an impressionist sketch of Italy, which is complex in its own right. The New Italians by Charles Richards is just such an impressionist sketch. The book is well written and engaging, with the exception of the last chapters which I found dragged. Richards writes of modern Italy, since the Second World War. He provides an interesting description of Italian attitudes, Italian politics and bureaucracy, which Richards describes as largely dysfunctional. His description of getting anything official done dovetails with the description in A Thousand Days in Venice of Ms. de Blasi and her fiance getting a marriage license (they only succeeded when her fiance lied to the official, telling her that Ms. de Blasi wrote for The New York Times and would write about how she could not get a marriage license). After describing the dysfunctional nature of most Italian cities, Richards describes Bologna, a city run by reformed Communists which runs better than most cities in Italy. Bologna (which I'm planning to visit) seems to be a bit like Catalonia: a mix of socialism with an affection of the good things in life and the willingness to work hard for them. There is a fairly long section on the various Italian Mafias (La Cosa Nostra of Sicily, the Camorra of Naples and the 'ndrangheta of Calabria). Richards covers the Italian Mafia because, like the cocaine cartels in Columbia, the Mafia has infiltrated Italian society, all the way up to some of the Prime Ministers, some allege. Better coverage of the Mafia and the courageous Sicilians who have fought it can be found in Excellent Cadavers by Alexander Stille.