Blood and Power

This book is not a history of Italy, nor a Mussolini biography, but a study of his political movement — a fragmented word gallery of personalities and events

The Sunday Times

Meticulous ... Fascinating ... Where Foot’s book is invaluable is in the light it sheds on dozens of unremembered heroes – who often, like [Giuseppe] Di Vagno, gave their lives attempting to save Italy from dictatorship – and in providing rounded pictures of men and women whose adventures we know about only partially.

Literary Review

Foot's fascinating book offers a new and disturbing reading of the Fascist era and its origins ... He presents a compelling kaleidoscope of individual stories that break through fascism's historic silences

History Today

Magnificent ... A tremendous work: vivid, visceral, and highly relevant to our own time ... Foot is a terrific writer and brings to life some of the key characters and events of the period ... Instead of dense political theory or detailed chronology, Foot gives us a history “through episodes, fragments, massacres and trials, moments of violence and escape, defeats and victories, silences and noise, rhetoric and reality”. His approach succeeds brilliantly

Camden New Journal

A deeply detailed historical excavation but written in part as warning ... John Foot is an academic who writes like a journalist (this is a compliment)

Simon Kuper

Lively, readable and provocative …. John Foot uses anecdotes and episodes, vignettes and thumbnail portraits to tell the story of Fascism … Foot’s plausible thesis is that it was violence that brought Fascism to power and underpinned the regime … Overall, Foot’s quirky book is a joy

BBC History Magazine

This is scholarly history at its best - vivid and clear. John Foot’s narrative glitters from beginning to end. It offers both a highly readable account of Mussolini’s ventennio and a rare depiction of how ordinary - and a few extraordinary - Italians experienced his thuggish dictatorship. Warmly recommended for anyone seeking to know what can happen when power falls into the hands of vainglorious nationalists.

John Hooper

Fascinating and illuminating throughout. John Foot has done the hard work of documenting in great detail the many lives and events that connected the Italy of the common people with the figure of Mussolini. Blood and Power offers disturbing intuitions as to the role of violence in the politics of the modern era.

Tim Parks

A highly readable, horrifying and extremely timely overview

The Indypendent

A gripping new history of fascism that privileges the voices of ordinary Italians and reminds us of the central role of violence in establishing and enforcing Mussolini's dictatorship. An excellent and timely work.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Professor of History and Italian Studies, New York University

One hundred years after the rise to power of Fascism in Italy, John Foot’s bracing and bold Blood and Power vividly recreates the on-the-ground experience of life under the regime.

Robert S C Gordon, Serena Professor of Italian, University of Cambridge