A Rugged Nation: Mountains and the Making of Modern Italy

Abstract

This is a book about mountains and Italianess. This association may sound strange to foreign ears for, as Armiero says in the introduction, mountains “seem to lack the typical ingredients of Italianess” (p. 1) for people who are not so familiar with Italian history and culture. Yet, in less than 200 pages, Armiero proves the centrality of the Alps and the Apennines in the narratives of the nation and its territory from the very beginning of the process of unification, and also in the concepti...