One of modern Italy's best literary critics and scholars places Fascism in its longrange historical setting. He begins with Dante and comes down through Machiavelli, the Risorgimento, United Italy to the postwar period. A little more than half the book covers the years since the March on Rome. Though Professor Borgese, now of the University of Chicago, is an exile, his book shows no bitterness or passion. It is, by and large, one of the fairest and most readable works on contemporary Italy.