The Family of Gaetano Salvemini Under Fascism

Book excerpt: "This is a book that combines a dramatic political history with a no less dramatic family, personal history. The reader is in for a rare treat." -David Kertzer, Paul Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science and Professor of Anthropology and Italian Studies at Brown University and Winner of the Pulitzer Prize (2015) Gaetano Salvemini (1873 - 1957), one of the most influential Italian intellectuals of his generation, was an historian, a professor, and a tireless anti-fascist who mentored a new generation of young intellectuals and political activists, such as Piero Gobetti, Ernesto Rossi, and Carlo & Nello Rosselli. After losing his wife and five children in the 1908 Messina earthquake, Salvemini began a new family with his second wife, Fernande Dauriac, and her two children, Jean and Ghita. Yet, despite its marked influence on his life and politics, Salvemini's second family and its involvement with fascism have never been studied before. Consulting hitherto unused archival sources, Filomena Fantarella uncovers a little known dimension of Salvemini's life and reveals the personal costs of his anti-fascism, especially considering the tragic embrace of fascism by his stepson, Jean Luchaire. .