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Il racconto rigoroso, dettagliato e appassionante delle origini della Milano universitaria. Milano oggi conta un sistema universitario fortemente articolato – con ben sette università statali e non statali – che rappresenta una delle eccellenze del territorio. Ma come si è formata questa complessa struttura? In queste pagine scopriremo l'evoluzione dei primi progetti di istruzione superiore che posero le basi per le future università milanesi, progetti sostenuti da una rete di istituzioni pubbliche e private e da personaggi di primo piano come Francesco Brioschi, Graziadio Ascoli e Luigi Mangiagalli. A essi il libro dedica molto spazio, mostrando il loro ruolo di catalizzatori e organizzatori culturali. È una storia di grandi realizzazioni, che approdò nel 1924 alla creazione dell'Università degli Studi, che si affiancava al Politecnico, alla Bocconi e alla Cattolica. Ma è anche una vicenda complicata: Enrico Decleva racconta le difficoltà, le incertezze e le pressioni politiche che condizionarono questo percorso e le soluzioni raggiunte per arrivare al risultato finale. Una storia ricca di insegnamenti anche per l'oggi. Basata su materiale archivistico di prima mano, rigorosissima nelle fonti, quest'opera rappresenta il punto culminante di molti anni di studi. Un libro postumo che costituisce un lascito intellettuale straordinario e di grande attualità.

This book offers the first comprehensive and authoritative text on the history of physics in Italy's industrial and financial capital, from the foundation of the University of Milan's Institute of Physics in 1924 up to the early 1960s, when it moved to its current location. It includes biographies and a historical-scientific analysis of the main research topics investigated by world-renowned physicists such as Aldo Pontremoli, Giovanni Polvani, Giovanni Gentile Jr., Beppo Occhialini, and Piero Caldirola, highlighting their contributions to the development of Italian physics in a national and international context. Further, the book provides a historical perspective on the interplay of physics and politics in Italy during both the Fascist regime and the postwar reconstruction period, which led to the creation of the CISE (Centro Informazioni Studi Esperienze, a research center for applied nuclear physics, funded by private industries) in 1946, and of the Milan division of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) in 1951.

Though largely forgotten today, one of the most destructive terrorist groups in the United States was the Galleanists, a fiery band of Italian anarchists active during the early 1900s. In America's Forgotten Terrorists, Jeffrey D. Simon shows how alienation and frustration among segments of a community were transformed into a militant extremist movement. Luigi Galleani, a gifted writer and speaker, tapped into widespread disappointment among Italian immigrants concerning their lives in America. Unemployment, low wages, long working hours, discrimination, and a poor quality of life made many Italian immigrants receptive to his words. The Galleanists introduced terrorist tactics and strategies that are still used today: they were the first group to send package bombs across the country and to exploit the media for their own advantage. One of their members is also suspected of launching the first vehicle bomb in the United States in 1920, considered the worst act of domestic terrorism until the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The story of the Galleanists is a chilling journey through a volatile period in American history, including labor-management conflicts, World War I, and the Red Scare. An expert in terrorism, Simon offers striking insights into the Galleanist era and some of its eerie connections to modern America, calling us to recognize the risks of repeating our history. How the Galleanists operated and how the U.S. government responded hold lessons for today as we continue to deal with the threat of terrorism.Watch a book trailer.

«Italiani, fate più figli»: una parola d'ordine che è stata un simbolo del fascismo. Oggi è di nuovo in auge. Un passato che ritorna o tutt'un altro fenomeno? Tra geografia e storia della popolazione, storia del pensiero demografico e storia politica, questo libro segue il sorgere, lo sparire e il riemergere in Italia, lungo quasi un secolo, dell'idea che lo stato debba promuovere la natalità. Lungo il filo rosso del nesso fra interpretazioni dei fatti demografici e scelte politiche si intreccia una molteplicità di temi: il confronto fra dinamiche demografiche e politiche nataliste, nell'Italia fascista e nel resto d'Europa (l'Italia un'eccezione? l'Italia come gli altri?); il processo che induce il fascismo a fare della questione delle nascite una priorità assoluta, il prender forma, sotto gli auspici del regime, della demografia come scienza autonoma, il delinearsi, nell'Italia del tempo, di una variegata e singolare geografia delle nascite (più figli nelle città che nelle campagne?). E un rilievo particolare assume la questione dei rapporti tra regime e demografi, fino al saldarsi della politica demografica con quella della razza. È la continuità nella discontinuità della vicenda, poi, che colpisce. Emerge chiaro come il ricordo incombente della natura ‘fascistissima'della politica demografica abbia dominato – tra rimozioni e tabù – i modi di porsi rispetto alla questione delle nascite nel dopoguerra, tra dettami della chiesa, modello sovietico, minoritarie battaglie laiche. Ma, soprattutto, seguendo gli sviluppi che giungono fino all'oggi ci si rende conto che senza un confronto con questa lunga storia nella sua interezza mal si coglie il senso del risorto natalismo, di destra o di sinistra, nell'Italia della denatalità e dell'immigrazione.

Born in Vercelli in 1861, Luigi Galleani is considered, with Errico Malatesta, the most influential militant of Italian-speaking anarchism. A tireless thinker, agitator, and public speaker, he attracted large numbers of workers to the revolutionary cause in Italy and the United States. This book, the result of a fruitful collaboration between Antonio Senta, a scholar of anarchist history, and Sean Sayers, a philosopher and Galleani's grandson, is the biography of one of the most charismatic exponents of workers'struggles in Europe and the United States between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Il libro descrive le passioni e i sentimenti che animavano i rivoluzionari italiani di fine Ottocento. Carteggi e diari, autobiografie e memorie illuminano le ragioni di una militanza che – tra esaltazioni e disillusioni, arresti e clandestinità, esilio e manicomi – assunse per molti i tratti di una vera e propria scommessa esistenziale. La scelta della rivoluzione fu generata da uno slancio etico verso un mondo più giusto, prima che da una coerente adesione ideologica a una dottrina politica. Dinamiche familiari, letture, relazioni di amore e di amicizia, odi personali e politici compongono un mosaico di storie individuali da cui emerge il lessico insieme politico e sentimentale del sovversivismo italiano di fine secolo.

The Sons of Night is two, or more, books in one. The first is Antoine Gimenez's memoir of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, an engaging tale of heroism and intrigue. The remaining three-quarters of the manuscript is a record of the fascination his memoir held for a group of historians—the'Gimenologists'—and the multiple paths of research and inquiry it led them down. Book Two begins with eighty-two'endnotes'to the memoir, each the equivalent of a chapter that follows a particular historical thread or explores a question raised by Gimenez's text. This is followed by the biographies of various people appearing in the memoir, many based on the friendships the historians formed with the now-elderly revolutionaries. The book closes with an Afterword discussing theoretical issues raised by the memoir and seven appendices. Also includes an Introduction by Spanish historian Julián Vadillo Muñoz.

The image of the anarchist assassin haunted the corridors of power and the popular imagination in the late nineteenth century. Fear spawned a gross but persistent stereotype: a swarthy'Italian'armed with a bloody knife or revolver and bred to violence by a combination of radical politics, madness, innate criminality, and poor genes. That Italian anarchists targeted--and even killed--high-profile figures added to their exaggerated, demonic image. Nunzio Pernicone and Fraser M. Ottanelli dig into the transnational experiences and the historical, social, cultural, and political conditions behind the phenomenon of anarchist violence in Italy. Looking at political assassinations in the 1890s, they illuminate the public effort to equate anarchy's goals with violent overthrow. Throughout, Pernicone and Ottanelli combine a cutting-edge synthesis of the intellectual origins, milieu, and nature of Italian anarchist violence with vivid portraits of its major players and their still-misunderstood movement. A bold challenge to conventional thinking, Assassins against the Old Order demolishes a century of myths surrounding anarchist violence and its practitioners.

The Routledge History of Italian Americans weaves a narrative of the trials and triumphs of one of the nation's largest ethnic groups. This history, comprising original essays by leading scholars and critics, addresses themes that include the Columbian legacy, immigration, the labor movement, discrimination, anarchism, Fascism, World War II patriotism, assimilation, gender identity and popular culture. This landmark volume offers a clear and accessible overview of work in the growing academic field of Italian American Studies. Rich illustrations bring the story to life, drawing out the aspects of Italian American history and culture that make this ethnic group essential to the American experience.

Il volume raccoglie i risultati delle ricerche condotte sulla ‘Raccolta Documentaria dei Primati Scientifici e Tecnici Italiani': documenti, oggetti, materiale bibliografico e giornalistico raccolti dal Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche per la partecipazione dell'Italia all'Esposizione Universale di Chicago A Century of Progress del 1933. Questa raccolta, voluta da Mussolini e Guglielmo Marconi, rappresenta, per l'importanza dei protagonisti coinvolti, il contributo ideale della scienza e della tecnica italiane nel mondo e il loro ruolo durante il regime fascista. Un'occasione importante per il governo del tempo, impegnato a promuovere il CNR come soggetto coordinatore della politica della ricerca scientifico-tecnologica, al servizio della modernizzazione. Le vicende storiche della ‘Raccolta Documentaria'restituiscono l'immagine di un Paese ossessionato dalla modernità e dal progresso tecnologico come strumento di una politica di potenza ritenuta fondamentale in quegli anni così tormentati. Questa volontà propagandistica che coniuga divulgazione e rivendicazione dei ‘primati scientifici italiani'si declina però anche attraverso una serie di esposizioni che lasciano in eredità importanti realtà museali. La stessa ‘Raccolta Documentaria'dà origine nel 1937 a un Museo delle Scienze all'interno del nuovo palazzo del CNR a Roma e trova infine la sua definitiva collocazione, a partire dagli anni Cinquanta, nel Museo della Scienza e della Tecnica di Milano, dove perde la connotazione originale e assume nuovi significati. Riflettere sulle vicende di questo patrimonio e sull'immagine pubblica della scienza nel Ventennio può contribuire a guardare a questa rappresentazione in senso meno retorico e più storico, con una prospettiva che vada oltre le categorie autocelebrative dei ‘primati nazionali'o del ‘pantheon della scienza'e abbracci nuovi percorsi interpretativi.

'[A] valuable account... The Wrong Hands brilliantly guides us through [the] challenges to American democracy.'-Howard P. Segal, Times Higher Education Gun ownership rights are treated as sacred in America, but what happens when dissenters moved beyond firearm possession into the realm of high explosives? How should the state react? Ann Larabee's The Wrong Hands, a remarkable history of do-it-yourself weapons manuals from the late nineteenth century to the recent Boston Marathon bombing, traces how efforts to ferret out radicals willing to employ ever-more violent methods fueled the growth of the American security state. But over time, the government's increasingly forceful targeting of violent books and ideas-not the weapons themselves-threatened to undermine another core American right: free expression. In the 1886 Haymarket Square bombing, a new form of revolutionary violence that had already made its mark in Europe arrived in the United States. At the subsequent trial, the judge allowed into evidence Johann Most's infamous The Science of Revolutionary Warfare, which allegedly served as a cookbook for the accused. Most's work was the first of a long line of explosive manuals relied on by radicals. By the 1960s, small publishers were drawing from publicly available US military sources to produce works that catered to a growing popular interest in DIY weapons making. The most famous was The Anarchist Cookbook (1971), which soon achieved legendary status-and a lasting presence in the courts. Even novels, such as William Pierce's The Turner Diaries, have served as evidence in prosecutions of right-wing radicals. More recently, websites explaining how to make all manner of weapons, including suicide vests, have proliferated. The state's right to police such information has always hinged on whether the disseminators have legitimate First Amendment rights. Larabee ends with an analysis of the 1979 publication of instructions for making a nuclear weapon, which raises the ultimate question: should a society committed to free speech allow a manual for constructing such a weapon to disseminate freely? Both authoritative and eye-opening, The Wrong Hands will reshape our understanding of the history of radical violence and state repression in America.

Despite the vast amount of research on Italian anarchism conducted over the last forty years, little is known about the history of Milanese anarchists. Living Like Nomads: The Milanese Anarchist Movement Before Fascism illuminates anarchist ideas, practices and militants in Milan during the two decades before the rise of fascism. It tells the fascinating stories of some Italian anarchists at the beginning of the twentieth century, and sheds light on their lifestyle, political campaigns and ideological debates.Living Like Nomads examines anarchist thought, particularly the relationship between theories of individualism and communist anarchism. It engages with masters of this school of philosophy such as Bakunin, Malatesta, Stirner and Kropotkin. By detailing the lives of unknown anarchists, it reveals the pivotal role played by anarchists – and anarchism – within the eclectic Italian Left. Milanese anarchists produced exciting initiatives and captivating ideological debates. While they did not cause a revolution in Milan, their importance cannot be overlooked. Anarchists in Milan gave birth to the first non-denominational modern school, campaigned against militarism, engaged with the labour movement, and published extensively. No other anarchist movement has published as much as Milanese anarchists did. While such anarchists did not prevent the rise of fascism in Italy, they were the first instance of anti-fascist resistance when they stood up against the violence of Mussolini's black shirts after the First World War. Given anarchism's principles of individual freedom, social justice and equality, this insightful study of the troubled history of anarchist movements contributes to a greater understanding of the modern Left.

Though the history of terrorism stretches back to the ancient world, today it is often understood as a recent development. Comprehensive enough to serve as a survey for students or newcomers to the field, yet with enough depth to engage the specialist, The Routledge History of Terrorism is the first single-volume authoritative reference text to place terrorism firmly into its historical context. Terrorism is a transnational phenomenon with a convoluted history that defies easy periodization and narrative treatment. Over the course of 32 chapters, experts in the field analyze its historical significance and explore how and why terrorism emerged as a set of distinct strategies, tactics, and mindsets across time and space. Chapters address not only familiar topics such as the Northern Irish Troubles, the Palestine Liberation Organization, international terrorism, and the rise of al-Qaeda, but also lesser-explored issues such as: American racial terrorism state terror and terrorism in the Middle Ages tyrannicide from Ancient Greece and Rome to the seventeenth century the roots of Islamist violence the urban guerrilla, terrorism, and state terror in Latin America literary treatments of terrorism. With an introduction by the editor explaining the book's rationale and organization, as well as a guide to the definition of terrorism, an historiographical chapter analysing the historical approach to terrorism studies, and an eight-chapter section that explores critical themes in the history of terrorism, this book is essential reading for all those interested in the past, present, and future of terrorism.