Description

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Award-winning author Alexander Stille has been called "one of the best English-language writers on Italy" by the New York Times Book Review, and in The Sack of Rome he sets out to answer the question: What happens when vast wealth, a virtual media monopoly, and acute shamelessness combine in one man? Many are the crimes of Silvio Berlusconi, Stille argues, and, with deft analysis, he weaves them into a single mesmerizing chronicle—an epic saga of rank criminality, cronyism, and self-dealing at the highest levels of power.

About the Author

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Alexander Stille is the author of The Future of the Past, Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic, and Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Award. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications.

Praise For…

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A frightening case study . . . that has plenty of bearing on our own media-driven politics. (BusinessWeek)

With a sharp knife and a clear eye, Stille . . . has dissected the remarkable, revolting story of the rise of the former (and future?) prime minister of Italy, and the political-cultural revolution that he has fathered, for good and mostly for bad. . . . Fascinating. (Los Angeles Times)

This riveting, unsparing biography is not merely an exposT of Berlusconi but a vivid lesson in how, under the right conditions, any man of wealth and few scruples can manipulate an entire nation. (Chicago Tribune)