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Title details for A Chill in the Air by Iris Origo - Available

A Chill in the Air

by Iris Origo
Lucy Hughes-Hallett
ebook
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This recently discovered “trenchant, intelligent” follow-up to the British expatriate’s classic memoir, War in Val d’Orcia, chronicles life in Italy in the year leading up to WW2 (New Yorker).

This insightful diary provides a vivid, ground-level account of how Mussolini decided on a course of action that would devastate his country and ultimately destroy his regime. In 1939 it was not a foregone conclusion that Mussolini would enter World War II on the side of Hitler.
 
Though the British-born Origo lived with her Italian husband on an estate in a remote part of Tuscany, she was supremely well-connected and regularly in touch with intellectual and diplomatic circles in Rome, where her godfather, William Phillips, was the American ambassador.
 
Her diary documents the Fascist government’s growing infatuation with Nazi Germany as Hitler’s armies marched triumphantly across Europe, and the campaign of propaganda and intimidation that was mounted in support of its new aims. The book ends with the birth of Origo’s daughter and Origo’s decision to go to Rome to work with prisoners of war at the Italian Red Cross. 
A Chill in the Air offers an indispensable record of Italy at war as well as a thrilling story of a formidable woman’s transformation from observer to actor at a great historical turning point.
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Publisher: New York Review Books

Kindle Book

  • Release date: August 7, 2018

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 9781681372655
  • File size: 378 KB
  • Release date: August 7, 2018

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9781681372655
  • File size: 378 KB
  • Release date: August 7, 2018

Formats

Kindle Book
OverDrive Read
EPUB ebook

subjects

Biography & Autobiography History Politics Nonfiction

Languages

English

This recently discovered “trenchant, intelligent” follow-up to the British expatriate’s classic memoir, War in Val d’Orcia, chronicles life in Italy in the year leading up to WW2 (New Yorker).

This insightful diary provides a vivid, ground-level account of how Mussolini decided on a course of action that would devastate his country and ultimately destroy his regime. In 1939 it was not a foregone conclusion that Mussolini would enter World War II on the side of Hitler.
 
Though the British-born Origo lived with her Italian husband on an estate in a remote part of Tuscany, she was supremely well-connected and regularly in touch with intellectual and diplomatic circles in Rome, where her godfather, William Phillips, was the American ambassador.
 
Her diary documents the Fascist government’s growing infatuation with Nazi Germany as Hitler’s armies marched triumphantly across Europe, and the campaign of propaganda and intimidation that was mounted in support of its new aims. The book ends with the birth of Origo’s daughter and Origo’s decision to go to Rome to work with prisoners of war at the Italian Red Cross. 
A Chill in the Air offers an indispensable record of Italy at war as well as a thrilling story of a formidable woman’s transformation from observer to actor at a great historical turning point.
Expand title description text
Biography & Autobiography History Politics Nonfiction