A fine study of postwar Italy. The authors, a former American diplomat and a veteran Swiss journalist, have a keen sense of how Italian institutions operate-when they do-and how parties work and individuals count. For all its problems and contradictions, Italian democracy has been a postwar success. Written with clarity, compassion and bemused detachment, the book is to be recommended for style and authority about a people that enjoys "an uncanny ability to bring at least a minimum of order out of a maximum of chaos."