This volume portrays an exciting and almost unknown face of Italy: that couple of generations, between the 19th and 20th centuries, full of Mazzinians, Garibaldini, democrats moved by a universalist spirit and a sense of apostolate for freedom. They have often been confused with exponents of nationalism or annexationist projections on lands that were considered Italian, but they were something different: a profoundly revolutionary movement, a non-Marxist left that could give rise to a democratic, patriotic, legalitarian political system that respected the freedoms of other peoples. It was inspired by the magisterium of Giuseppe Mazzini, the political theories of Carlo Cattaneo and the determination of Giuseppe Garibaldi.

A movement of Italians from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but also from revolutionary circles in Lombardy, Romagna, Marche and Lazio. A human parabola marked by victories and defeats, sacrifices and mourning that finally landed in D’Annunzio’s Fiume in search of a possible Italian revolution, only to split and disperse in the political turning points of the early post-war period.
The survivors of that movement will find, in the name of the Risorgimento, a new commitment in anti-fascism up to the Resistance. They are the protagonists of this intense, dutiful and in many respects unpublished political and moral biography.