A Chill in the Air

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 Britis