Download or read book Italy and its Discontents 1980-2001 written by Paul Ginsborg and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2003-01-30 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this long-awaited book (already a major bestseller in Italy) Ginsborg has created a fascinating, sophisticated and definitive account of how Italy has coped, or failed to cope, with the past two decades. Contemporary Italy strongly mirrors Britain - the countries have roughly the same extent, population size and GNP - and yet they are fantastically different. Ginsborg sees this difference as most fundamentally clear in the role of the family and it is the family which is at the heart of Italian politics and business. Anyone wishing to understand contemporary Italy will find it essential to have this enormously attractive and intelligent book.