Bella Ciao

What This Book Covers

1. A Flower in the Rifle
2. Chapter One - The Seeds of a Strongman
3. Chapter Two - March on Rome
4. Chapter Three - The Fascist Makeover
5. Chapter Four - The Abyss in Africa
6. Chapter Five - Axis of Ego
7. Chapter Six - Greece and the Balkan Debacle
8. Chapter Seven - War in the Desert
9. Chapter Eight - Sicily Burns
10. Chapter Nine - The Puppet in the North
11. Chapter Ten - The Final Exit
12. Chapter Eleven - Goodbye, Beautiful

Excerpt

A FLOWER IN THE RIFLE IT BEGINS WITH a song. Soft at first, almost a hum. A lullaby from the rice fields, sung by women who knew what it meant to endure. A worker’s song, a protest disguised as melody. Bella ciao. Bella ciao. Bella ciao, ciao, ciao. But by the time Benito Mussolini heard it, it was no longer soft. It was echoing down alleyways. Spray-painted on walls. Pounded on tabletops in secret, and sung by boys barely old enough to shave, loading bullets into rifles with dirt under their fingernails. The man who once made Italy chant his name now heard them chant his funeral. Not in Latin. Not in Roman splendor. But in the people's tongue. “If I die as a partisan / You must bury me…”...