• Mussolini's Daughter

  • The Most Dangerous Woman in Europe
  • By: Caroline Moorehead
  • Narrated by: Kathleen Gati
  • Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (14 ratings)

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Mussolini's Daughter  By  cover art

Mussolini's Daughter

By: Caroline Moorehead
Narrated by: Kathleen Gati
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Publisher's summary

A thrilling biography of Edda Mussolini—Benito Mussolini’s favorite daughter, one of the most influential women in 1930s Europe—and a heart-stopping account of the unraveling of the Fascist dream in Italy, from award-winning historian and author of the acclaimed Resistance Quartet, Caroline Moorehead

“Reads like a page-turning thriller.”—BookPage

Edda Mussolini was the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s oldest and favorite child. At 19, she was married to Count Galleazzo Ciano, Il Duce’s Minister for Foreign Affairs during the 1930s, the most turbulent decade in Italy’s fascist history. In the years preceding World War II, Edda ruled over Italy’s aristocratic families and the cultured and middle classes while selling Fascism on the international stage. How a young woman wielded such control is the heart of Moorehead’s fascinating history. The issues that emerge reveal not only a great deal about the power of fascism, but also the ease with which dictatorship so easily took hold in a country weakened by war and a continent mired in chaos and desperate for peace.

Drawing on a wealth of archival material, some newly released, along with memoirs and personal papers, Mussolini’s Daughter paints a portrait of a woman in her twenties whose sheer force of character and ruthless narcissism helped impose a brutal and vulgar movement on a pliable and complicit society. Yet as Moorehead shows, not even Edda’s colossal willpower, her scheming, nor her father’s avowed love could save her husband from Mussolini’s brutal vengeance.

As she did in her Resistance Quartet, Moorehead delves deep into the past, exploring what fascism felt like to those living under it, how it blossomed and grew, and how fascists and aristocrats joined forces to pursue ten years of extravagance, amorality, and excessive luxury—greed, excess, and ambition that set the world on fire. The result is a powerful portrait of a young woman who played a key role in one of the most terrifying and violent periods in human history.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 Caroline Moorehead (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers

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Fascinating story told so well

I loved hearing the history of the family from the perspective of the daughter’s experiences. Well done. So interesting.

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Mind Blowing

I knew very little about Italy in those years. Growing up in San Francisco I knew a lot of Italians who had left Italy before Mussolini came to power. They probably knew as little about what happened as I did. Nobody cared. Then as an adult, I went to Italy to visit, and I felt that something was wrong. Now I know what it was.

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5 people found this helpful

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Excellent

The author is a true historian and has collected many diverse facts and viewpoints regarding this subject. The narrator is top notch.

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2 people found this helpful

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Great view of history from women’s eyes .

WW2 as seen by a woman who was there . Her story compelling, indulgent, selfish intrigue.

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2 people found this helpful