Machiavelli's Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan Contributor(s): Samuels, Richard J. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0801434920 ISBN-13: 9780801434921 Publisher: Cornell University Press OUR PRICE: $71.06 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: March 2003 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Political Science | Political Process - General - Political Science | History & Theory - General - History | Europe - Italy |
Dewey: 303.340 |
LCCN: 2002015019 |
Physical Information: 1.35" H x 6.4" W x 9.38" (1.88 lbs) 480 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - Italy - Cultural Region - Japanese |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Two late-developing nations, Japan and Italy, similarly obsessed with achieving modernity and with joining the ranks of the great powers, have traveled parallel courses with very different national identities. In this audacious book about leadership and historical choices, Richard J. Samuels emphasizes the role of human ingenuity in political change. He draws on interviews and archival research in a fascinating series of paired biographies of political and business leaders from Italy and Japan. Beginning with the founding of modern nation-states after the Meiji Restoration and the Risorgimento, Samuels traces the developmental dynamic in both countries through the failure of early liberalism, the coming of fascism, imperial adventures, defeat in wartime, and reconstruction as American allies. Highlights of Machiavelli's Children include new accounts of the making of postwar Japanese politics--using American money and Manchukuo connections--and of the collapse of Italian political parties in the Clean Hands (Mani Pulite) scandal.The author also tells the more recent stories of Umberto Bossi's regional experiment, the Lega Nord, the different choices made by Italian and Japanese communist party leaders after the collapse of the USSR, and the leadership of Silvio Berlusconi and Ishihara Shintar on the contemporary right in each country. |
Contributor Bio(s): Samuels, Richard J.: - Richard J. Samuels is Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Einstein Visiting Fellow at the Free University of Berlin. His books have won prizes from the American Political Science Association, the Association for Asian Studies, and the Society for Italian Historical Studies. His most recent book is 3.11: Disaster and Change in Japan. Follow him on Twitter @dicksamuelsMIT. |