Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I: The Project, the Party, and the Fascist State
1: Postwar Palingenesis: forming the fascist project
2: The Rise of Provincial Fascism. Periphery and centre in the years before 1925
3: Stabilisation in the Provinces: the party adapts
4: Party and State
5: Provincial Battles: problems in the party
6: The Provincial Party: activity and reputation
Part II: The Party and the People in the 1930s
7: Growing Disjunctions: PNF rule and popular reaction
8: Perceptions of the Party
9: Discontent and Disaffection in the 'totalitarian phase' of Fascism
10: The Flight from the Enchanter
11: The Failure of the Party
Select bibliography
Index of names

About the Author

Educated at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, Paul Corner has taught in Borneo, England, and Italy. He was research fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford, then Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of Italian Society at the University of Reading, and - since 1987 - has been Professor of European History at the University of Siena in Italy where he is also Director of the Centre for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. Author of many publications
relating to Italian Fascism and to totalitarianism in general, he has lectured widely on the subject in both Europe and America.

Reviews

a seminal study
*P. Lorenzini, CHOICE*

[an] informative and well-researched book
*David Gilmour, Times Literary Supplement*

excellent, well-sourced and well-argued
*Philip Morgan, English Historical Review*

Paul Corner's [book is a] stimulating, powerfully argued and important new study of the relationship between the fascist party and popular opinion in inter-war Italy.
*Christopher Duggan, Europen History Quarterly*

This is an utterly convincing account that will contribute to a better understanding of Italians' daily life during the ventennio. No doubt Corner's impressive academic work will be of interest not only to scholars of Italian fascism, but also to those who want to analyse the experience of ordinary people under any form of dictatorship.
*Francesco Messina, History*

Paul Corner's new book, however, acts as a major corrective to what might almost have seemed an established view. Based on meticulous social-historical research ... Corner depicts a regime with a yawning gap between what it claimed about itself and its presence in the lives of its subjects ... Corner's monograph must become the basis of all future reading on this dictatorship.
*R.J.B. Bosworth, The Historian*

The richness of its documentary sources, the breadth of its territorial coverage, and the rigor of its analysis make this book an invaluable addition to the historical scholarship on Italian fascism as it existed and was experienced at the provincial level.
*Anthony L. Cardoza, American Historical Review*

If a study deserves exuberant praise from Richard Evans, it is ... Paul Corner's investigation of fascism in the provinces.
*Martin Baumeister, German Historical Institute Year Book 2014*

[a] stimulating, powerfully argued and important new study of the relationship between the fascist party and popular opinion in inter-war Italy
*Christopher Duggan, European History Quarterly*