Publisher's Synopsis
As the Christian Democrats came to power after World War II, the Italian people hoped for a renewed Italy but their trust had been misplaced. In the first full English-language account of the Clean Hands crisis, Patrick McCarthy finds the roots of Berlusconi's rise and fall in the practices of clientalism, the machinations of the Mafia, the corporate direction of Fiat, the edicts of the Vatican, and even the organization of the Italian life. McCarthy also considers the establishment of the historic centre-left government that took power in mid-1996.